As a child, Frances got into a lot of trouble doing what she wanted to do. As a Wren, not much changed. She was an attractive, blond, twenty-year-old woman, and so was her friend Marnie. American sailors were no slower than Canadian sailors, so, within two days of joining the Canadian Wrens’ school in Seattle, she and her friend were invited by an American sailor to tour one of the large warships moored near the navy yard.
When it came time to leave the vessel, the two Wrens stepped ashore in the navy yard — and were promptly arrested. A marine officer seized them and dragged them off to the station.
“How the hell did you get in?” cried the American officer. “A colonel in the U.S. Army can’t get into this place without a pass!”
And then he phoned the FBI.
Frances and Marnie looked at each other, at a loss to understand. They had just walked in with their friend, the American sailor, casual as you please, and been given the Grand Tour of the USS Bunker Hill. And here they were, with the officer talking to the FBI guy on the phone.
“Their stories check …” and “Their number on file …” and “At the time they were apprehended …” Frances swallowed. Apprehended?!
Finally, another officer came in and said, “How did you people get in?”
Frances, by now more irritated than frightened, looked him coldly in the eye. “We swam in — from Canada.”
The officer, Frances thought, appeared to have had “a couple of jars” with his lunch. In any event, he took her response without offence, escorted them to the gate, and let them go.
On July 5, 1945, Frances’s group returned to Canada.
In August 1945, the Japanese surrendered, bringing the Second World War to an end, and with the cessation of hostilities, Frances’s thoughts turned to the future. Get out or stay in?
A week after the war ended, she celebrated her twenty-first birthday. Her friends gave her a party, and among her gifts were a sketch pad, a pencil, and a portfolio — a subtle hint of things to come. Throughout her time in the navy she had been sketching regularly. She found she had a facility and could capture a likeness easily and quickly.
At this point, her inclination was to leave the navy and take advantage of what was for many servicemen and women the opportunity of a lifetime: A university education, paid for by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
By mid-September she had made her decision, and submitted her name to the RCN depot, her formal “resignation” from the navy. It was not without the usual advice from many quarters. “Lieutenant Cassidy advised me to take art, but to stay in for awhile,” she said. “And after the Victory Loan Show, where I sang, Lieutenant Berlin wanted me to become a torch singer.” She laughed, but was thoughtful, too. “Might have been interesting.”
Above all, though, was the university education. But in what field? Medical? Her love of animals was strong, and veterinary medicine had its appeal. Music? She was already a competent violinist, she had a good voice, and music had always been in her nature. Art? Her sketching led her to consider drawing or painting; she thought she might become a good portrait artist.
In mid-October she sang at the Givenchy dance. “Dark Eyes” and “Night and Day” went over very well, and once again she saw herself draped over a piano, provocative off-the-shoulder dress, her husky voice lamenting a lost love, with Cole Porter at the keyboard, gazing up at her with a smile as he played the romantic hits of the day: Frances Gage, torch singer.
A long leave allowed Frances to return to home and family for the first time in seven months. Unfortunately, while her time in the navy had opened Frances’s mind to the exciting opportunities the world had to offer, nothing much had changed at home. She found that her mother and sister Barbara still didn’t get along. “Never did,” said Frances. Barbara was the youngest of the family, neglected at best, more often roughly ordered about, to which she responded with the stubbornness inherited from her mother.
“For heaven’s sake, girl, haven’t you folded those shirts yet?”
“I’ll fold them when I get around to it.”
“Do it now.” (A hard edge to the voice.)
“Later. Can’t you see I’m busy?” (Equally hard.)
“Don’t you give me that tone, my girl!”
Barbara would respond in kind, and any tranquility the day might have had was lost forever.
“There was the same unyielding nature in both of them,” said Frances. “Like a couple of mules. The best thing in the world would have been for Barbara to get away from home. Good for Mother, too.” Barbara, barely twenty, was already showing the signs of alcohol addiction, the demon that would torment her for the rest of her life.
On February 27, 1946, though she was technically still a Wren, Frances began a new job. She was hired to work on the development of a new Canadian flag. “I was still in the navy, but I had been doing a lot of drawing and sketching for the past two years, and had shown some of my work to Alan Beddoes, who was a wonderful typographer and an officer in the navy. The result was that I was hired to be the designer. Not so much the actual designer of the flag, but rather working with Alan to render the artwork of each design and determine the final choice among the many designs submitted.”
Frances was given a working area in the House of Commons. There she made a panel bearing all the flags of the world, with a small area in the middle where a new Canadian design would be placed, visually affording a quick and easy way of avoiding duplication of, or similarity to, another nation’s flag. Design suggestions came from a national contest. Frances took these submissions, drew them to scale, and then placed each in the panel for consideration by Alan Beddoes and herself, and the members of Parliament. They decided yes or no, then moved on to the next submission. “There were some very good ones,” she said, “and some that were awful. Twenty years later, when A.Y. Jackson saw the flag we have now, he said it looked like a Japanese dishrag.”
During the time she worked on the new flag, she was preoccupied by thoughts of the future. The flag work would not last forever. Veterinary medicine appealed to her. So did art. So did music. And, of course, there was always Frances the torch-singer. She sang at the Valentine party in mid-February, receiving much applause. She had a lovely contralto voice, and was confident that with proper training she could sing professionally. But as a career? Well, Doris Day and Jo Stafford weren’t doing too badly. During February she thought about it, but did not forget the other possibilities. Another consideration was the Wrens itself. She could stay in the service and sign on for perhaps twenty years. There were men in the military who were doing just that, planning for a discharge twenty years down the road, with a good pension, only forty years old with twenty years experience in a trade! Get a job and you’re looking at two incomes — paycheque and pension. The only thing wrong with that, in her mind, was those twenty long years in the service — not very exciting or satisfying.
Earlier, in February 1946, she had applied to the Ontario Veterinary College at Guelph for particulars on the course. A few days later she received a reply: she was number 361 on their waiting list of veterans. They would look forward to taking her in the fall of 1948. “I was devastated,” said Frances. “I knew I simply couldn’t wait two years. Now was the time I should be getting my education.” Frustrated, depressed, anxious for her future, she didn’t know where to turn.
Meanwhile, at “Flag HQ,” Frances’s “command post” in Ottawa, work on the new Canadian flag was moving ahead and she was buried in the bureaucratic brouhaha that surrounded the flag’s development. Her discharge from the navy had come through on the twenty-eighth of February, but because of her work on the flag, a letter was written to the secretary of state, and the discharge was placed in abeyance