It was a big day for the members of the Women's Auxiliary Airforce (WAAF) serving in the Fighter Command Control Operations Centre during World War II when Prime Minister Winston Churchill came for a tour.
The sergeant who ran the place was Dorothy Jones, who was actually a member of the Royal Air Force but had been on loan to the Royal Canadian Air Force for some time.
Churchill was guided into the bunker some 30 ft. below the Lincolnshire countryside by a squadron leader, an administrator who had been assigned to lead the tour.
Jones, better known to Mississaugans as Dorothy Jamieson, the name she acquired in 1945 when she married Canadian fighter pilot Ronald Jamieson, was introduced to Churchill.
Jamieson, an inveterate chatterer began to brief Churchill about the place.
"Excuse me, sergeant, you are dismissed," the squadron leader said to Jamieson.
Whereupon the Prime Minister interjected, "Excuse me squadron leader, you are dismissed. The sergeant will give me a tour."
Anyone who knows Dorothy Jamieson, a long-time Mississaugan who is now 87 and is as full of fire as ever, will have heard this story. What Sir Winston realized instantly that day in Jamieson was something others have often realized since: she's a woman of heart and mind, as Joni Mitchell might say.
It would take forever to list all of Jamieson's various causes and accomplishments over the years but here's a short list. She was the sergeant sent over to France with the first group of 68 women, "The Ladies in Waiting" who landed after D-Day to take over fighter operation rooms.
She was first female commodore of the Mississauga Canoe Club and first female commodore in North America; founder of the Oakville Canoe Club; first female canoeing official at an Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976; a driving force behind the Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners long-time fight to increase frozen benefits to expatriates (Jamieson gets a pension of about $110 a month for her six years of service);
and a stalwart supporter and lobbyist for the memorial to the women of the Allied Forces which finally became a reality this past summer in London, England. Unfortunately, Jamieson's health didn't allow her to see the culmination of her years of effort.
Undoubtedly her greatest success, however, was in a pitched battle with her former employer, Johns-Manville Corp., which used to have a Port Credit plant.
When the American-based firm went out of business here, Jamieson thought it shorted employees in its pension settlement plan. She organized employees and launched a legal battle.
There was a lengthy hearing in Edmonton. Jamieson managed to get financial support from the government to have every province in Canada separately represented at the hearing. Johns-Manville sent two lawyers form the States. She won the case and the large settlements improved the lives of hundreds of ex-Johns-Manville employees.
She's an institution at Fairwind Public School where she is the guest of honour each Remembrance Day and she's been on CFRB talk shows and Rogers Television forums almost as often as the mayor, whom she nominated for the Order of Canada she recently received.
And, oh yeah, Peter Mansbridge is her nephew and she sometimes calls him up and tells him about stories the CBC should be covering.
Her next crusade will be about recognition for the 480,000 war brides who came to Canada, many of whose husbands have passed on. She's already written to Ottawa to ask for a postage stamp in their honour and she's working on changing pension policy to benefit them.
Quite a woman our Dorothy. Quite a woman.