FLOYD, Ruth
Age at Death: 20
Rank Wren
Unit Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service
Service Number W4023
Place of Burial Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal PQ
Date of Birth 1925.03.30
Place of Birth Liverpool, UK
Enlistment September 11, 1943, Montreal PQ
Date of Death 1945.07.28
Daughter of William and Isabella Floyd, of Montreal
Born in Liverpool, England, Ruth was raised in Montreal. She stopped attending school at age 13 and worked a variety of jobs including domestic service, ward room attendant, mail clerk, and aide in a tuberculosis ward. She enlisted in the WRCNS in September 1943 with the goal of being a wardroom attendant, stating that she would like to be a children’s nurse after the war. In a particularly egregious example of the era’s sexism and classism, her assessment reads in part, “Applicant is very ordinary type but seems a nice little thing… Seems very common. Will probably improve in uniform.”
She worked on the HMCS Conestoga in Galt, Ontario, and later the HMCS Donnaconna in Montreal. In December 1943, she was admitted to hospital and diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died that July.
