Zabinsky, Joanna (Pinky) oral history interview

Pinky is a New Westminster woman who was born and raised at the top of Simpson St. above Sapperton Landing. During the Depression, she was 16 years old, and took her first job at the Royal City Cannery by Pattullo Bridge. She worked there for 3 summers (1936, 1937, 1938). She recalls the job as pleasurable, and talks about how she made a lot of money being young and fast with the knife. She finished school at St Anne’s Academy in the same area, and wanted to go to University of British Columbia to be a teacher. However, she needed to support her family and took a job as a cook at a nursing home, after a year she got a job at Pacific Veneer, working there from 1939 to 1946 when she became pregnant with her first child.