Helen Cook, Mary Walls and Winifred Rice’s friendship spans nearly seven decades.

The three war brides from different parts of the United Kingdom bonded over memories of leaving their lives to come to Canada.

“To be a war bride you had to be married to a serviceman by the end of 1945,” says Cook.

All three women married Canadian soldiers during the Second World War.

“When we landed at Halifax and I looked out, I thought, ‘what have I come to?’” says Walls, who came to Halifax from London.

The three were in their late teens when they married their husbands. Cook and Walls came to the Maritimes on RMS Maurentania in 1946. Rice came on the hospital ship Leticia.

“We was on the bottom, the war brides,’ says Walls. “The next [was] the troops and the next was pay costumers. Striked orders. Everything was roped off.”

“When I came to Canada I came from Liverpool,” says Rice. “But I wasn’t as lucky as those two girls to come on a big liner as we called them.

All three women docked in Halifax and came through Pier 21, which served as an immigration point from 1928 to 1971.

“That was weird because we had to come through and the soldiers help you through,” says Walls. “They would help you through with any luggage of the babies and then we had to show every identification we had, where we come from, where we’re going and all that.”

Cook says Pier 21 was ‘a great big shed’ when she arrived. 

“There was four workmen there. We said good morning and five of us were taken off the Maurentania at seven o’clock in the morning so we could get on the Maritime Express because we were coming to New Brunswick,” says Cook.

Thousands of women came through Pier 21 to head to different parts of Canada to start their new lives. 

“I don’t know if it was 48,000 that came over and if they counted the children,” says Walls. “I think it made it to 52,000. Could you imagine?”

“Pier 21 is special to us all,” says Rice.

A special place that was the first stop in Canada for the young women who, decades later, still call the Maritimes home. 

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Ashley Blackford.