March 8th is International Women’s Day and today we are celebrating Joyce May Firman, the first female letter carrier in Ontario and Canada’s first long-term letter carrier.
Joyce May Firman (1921 – 2015) started her full-time career right here in Port Credit at the old post office in 1967. By the end of her 18-year career, she had covered nearly every postal route in Port Credit.
Joyce was a trailblazer who carved a path for other female letter carriers is Canada. Joyce was also a facilitator of change in the working conditions for all letter carriers.
Joyce faced many challenges and opposition from the all-male letter carriers who postulated that she
“would only last two weeks”. When Joyce continued her work beyond the two weeks, the men held a Letter Carriers’ Union of Canada meeting to complain about having a female in their midst.
A few months later, they elected Joyce the first woman secretary of their local union.
Joyce lead a life of volunteerism and leadership. She was a member of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Port Credit Legion (Royal Canadian Legion Branch 82). In acknowledgement of her contributions, Joyce was awarded the Palm Leaf for meritorious service.
We invite you to visit the interpretive plaque located at the old post office in Port Credit (Stavebank Rd. and Lakeshore Rd.) to learn more about Joyce’s inspiring story.
Watch an episode of Ask A Historian with Matthew Wilkinson as he explores Joyce's life and interviews her daughter, Bonnie Heath, on her memories of her historic mother.
Thank you to Councillor Stephen Dasko, Heritage Mississauga, and the City of Mississauga for installing this incredible tribute to an phenomenal woman here in Port Credit.
Images: Heritage Mississauga
In my last two blog entries on Port Credit’s street names, I talked about how some of the village’s streets got their familiar name. This article is more of a challenge. I’m going to speculate on Port Credit street names whose origins are unrecorded.
It was at a recent get-together with friends at The Brogue Irish Pub that I saw an old licence plate on display on a post with what appeared to be some really bad math. On this licence plate is engraved “26+6=1”. I could have put some effort, at the time, into figuring out what that meant but since I was at The Brogue for some “craic”, I quickly put an end to any furthering thinking, and got back to my Guinness. (When I got home that evening, my calculator assured me that the correct answer is 32; not 1.)
In the last article I talked about some of the street names in Port Credit, and what we can learn about the village’s history from those names. This time, let’s move out from the village centre to discover what the street signs in east-end Port Credit tell us about the past.