Bomb Girls

by Barbara Dickson

  Dead in the Water

  An elite group of engineers who collectively represented the greatest minds in British munitions expertise sailed for England January 19, 1941, while another group of their esteemed colleagues, who had set out for Britain two months earlier, were well on their way home, with their arrival imminent.1 Everyone involved in Project No. 24 assumed all was well. However, anxious days passed with no word from the returning gentlemen or their ship. Days slipped into weeks. GECO personnel and government officials feared the worst. Had a German U-boat sunk the vessel carrying many of the brightest engineering minds in the world? A year would pass before GECO’s employee newspaper, the GECO Fusilier, would issue a small news item relaying the incident, after the secrecy surrounding the engineering mission had passed. The news clip read:

  One wintry day in February, 1941, a weather-scarred ship, grotesque in its camouflage paint, plowed its way into Montreal harbo[u]r and was berthed by fussy, panting tugs. Her arrival caused a stir in many hearts. She had left Scotland three weeks before and was long overdue. The worst was feared for she had picked her precarious way unconvoyed from Iceland across the sub-infested north Atlantic. So convinced were officials concerned that she had gone the way of so many good ships since 1939 that the terse, official forms used for notifying next of kin of passengers and crew had already been made out. Mercifully, there was now no need to send them.

  From the ship a group of Canadian men, some still recovering from the pangs of seasickness, disembarked. This group had been handpicked, mostly from the engineering profession, by Allied War Supplies Corporation months before.2

  It was from members of this sea-tossed group — including several British personnel who migrated to Canada to consult on plant design and assist in fuse-filling methodology — and the second group, which followed (and returned without incident), that “Scarboro” recruited its start-up supervisory staff. Had these men truly been lost at sea, “Scarboro,” and, in turn, Canada’s entire munitions war effort, might have suffered a significant and perhaps disastrous delay.

  Turning of the Sod — with a Little Help from Some TNT

  Within two weeks of King George expropriating Canadian soil, lumber and materials were delivered to the future plant’s home — a huge expanse of farmland covered in knee-deep snow. On February 6, without pomp or circumstance, without cheery speeches or a silver shovel, a handful of resilient Canadian construction workers set off dynamite to blast through two feet of hardened earth and snow.3 Blasting agitated nearby livestock and farm families alike, and GECO personnel had to deal with the wrath of the latter. Their complaints were of little consequence, though. The war could not wait for Canada’s spring thaw.

  The Hamilton brothers had lots of experience coping with fierce Canadian winters in their earlier government war projects, and encouraged their men to remain steadfast in their mission. Bob Hamilton’s clear mandate fuelled construction: the plant was to be in production by July, with completion of construction of some 130 buildings by September.4 His goal was no small one; it had never had been attempted before in Canada’s history, nor has it since. A.W.S.C.’s early production capacity of 1.5 million filled munitions per month seemed a reasonable goal for future employees of GECO to meet.5 They expected the facility to cost $2.96 million to build.6

  Bob Hamilton instructed his newly formed construction team: “Keep things moving as fast as possible with the best information we can obtain from any source, keeping A.W.S.C. posted so they can stop or change anything they do not want.”7 Despite bitter northerly winds and lots of snow, the patriotic and indomitable spirit of dedicated workers on GECO’s payroll overcame anything the winter of ’41 fired their way.

  Loose Lips Sink Ships

  On March 3, 1941, less than a month after breaking ground, Bob and Phil Hamilton leased space at 1218 Danforth Avenue in Toronto that would eventually become the first administration and employment office for the Scarboro plant.8 They hired Project No. 24’s first secretary, Miss Dorothy Cheesman.

  The Hamilton brothers expected Dorothy, at just sixteen years of age, to type up top-secret engineering notes. She had her photo and fingerprints taken, and swore a solemn oath of secrecy. To be sure, she had never experienced the intrigue associated with such clandestine activities before. Forbidden to reveal anything she saw, heard, or learned, Dorothy was entrusted by GECO staff to lock the safe each evening with classified engineering notes safely tucked inside. Some might say Dorothy’s young age and naivety subjected Canada’s war effort to possible sabotage should she accidently “spill the beans,” allowing delicate information to slip into treasonous hands. Bob and Phil Hamilton’s gamble paid off, however. A steadfast and patriotic employee, Dorothy would accomplish great things at GECO.

  The Gunpowder Plot

  Prior to opening its Danforth office, the General Engineering Company (Canada) Ltd. conducted business from its longstanding offices situated in the Concourse Building at 100 Adelaide Street West.9 “Adelaide” became the birthplace of Project No. 24. During the winter and spring of 1941, planning, organization, and design of the new plant originated from these offices. GECO engineers, along with several of Britain’s chemical experts, covertly transformed basement offices into a miniature machine shop and fuse-filling factory.10 A year later, once GECO’s production was well underway, the employee newspaper would comment on the “Gunpowder Plot”:

  Piece by piece a 1,400 lb. ring press and facing lathe had been smuggled in and set up. A twelve-inch-wide pipe was installed to carry off smoke and fumes as unobtrusively as might be. Innocent looking packages that might have been mistaken for Sunday’s roast, but were gunpowder, and primer components came next. A stranger “barging in” inopportunely might well have thought he had stumbled on a modern Guy Fawkes’ plot.

  Everything was so “hush hush” that no one outside a small coterie of GECO principals, technicians, and a few operators had the slightest inkling of the exciting things that were taking place in that downtown cellar — certainly not the office tenants of the building, which was fortunate for their individual and collective peace of mind — nor the “news hawks” not much farther than a good stone’s throw away.11

  Despite the best intentions and precautions of those involved, occasionally acrid black smoke escaped up the building’s elevator shafts.12 Amazingly, no one noticed. Explosives were stored in an old office vault at day’s end.13 The work accomplished in those cramped basement quarters with minimal equipment came to be known as “The Gunpowder Plot.” Newly acquired Ted Smith felt this work “was instrumental in speeding Canada’s ammunition[-]filling programme by six to eight months.”14 Engineer William Taylor acknowledged that “Between March and May, 1941, all of the secret doings in that cellar suite had some significance.”15

  Canadian history was made in the basement of that tall downtown office building.

  Needed: 2,500 Good Strong Men

  By early March 1941, GECO’s construction “gang” was moving heaven and earth to turn pastures and wheat fields into a wartime ammunition plant. Bob and Phil Hamilton needed good strong men, and a lot of them. Business in Canada had not recovered from the Great Depression and a significant job shortage remained. If anything good could come from a world at war, perhaps it was full-time employment. Canada’s unemployment rate fell from 10 percent in 1939 to almost zero by 1943 as wartime industry grew.16 In 1941, GECO was one of the first large employers to offer work in over a decade.

  Construction crews were working around the clock by early May 1941.17 With over two thousand workmen employed, several buildings were well on their way to completion.18 Staff opened GECO’s first change house temporarily in an old construction shed abutting Building No. 26.19 The change house was prepared in anticipation of GECO receiving its inaugural group of female supervisors.

  Hartley Anthony French was a young man, twenty years old, attending the University of Toronto in its electrical engineering program in May 1941. Desperate for summer employment,
Hartley discovered an advertisement for GECO in a local paper. He headed to the hiring office on Danforth Avenue on May 3, and signed up immediately as an apprentice electrician. By 2:00 that same afternoon, Hartley had hopped aboard the bus for the bumpy forty-five-minute ride to the GECO construction site amid the farmland of Scarboro. He would spend the next four months under the tutelage of an electrician, helping lay GECO’s electrical foundation, primarily housed underground in an emerging elaborate tunnel system.20 GECO, to Hartley, was not a top-secret munitions plant, but rather a large, roaming, and busy construction site. Buildings at the north end of the complex — near Wardin and Eglinton Avenues — had completed construction, while the more southern area of the site — toward Wardin Avenue and Comstock Road — was still under excavation.

  In June 1941, GECO’s construction rolls peaked at 2,681 men working around the clock.21 The expected total cost to build the plant had increased, now expected to exceed $3.5 million up from an earlier $2.25 million projection.22

  On the seventh of the month, engineers at the rapidly expanding munitions site filled and tested GECO’s first few fuses, all for the “defence of the empire.”23 Media showed up for this important milestone to watch the earth-shaking demonstration of explosive might.24 Engineers timed the explosions, and all was declared “definitely good,” by Ted Smith, resident Brititsh munitions expert.25

  With construction slowing and production beginning, it was now time to give thought to filling the many positions needed to bring the plant to full capacity. At the time, Bob and Phil Hamilton expected to hire 1,500 men and 2,500 women to work at GECO with an annual cost to employ these 4,000 civilians expected to reach $3 million.26

  If there was some concern that potential workers might be afraid to sign up for a position at a munitions plant because of the danger of explosions, an article that appeared in the Toronto Daily Star helped to allay it. The reporter explained that filling munitions was safer than other types of manufacturing, “and much safer than general construction work.”27 He also stated that “production accidents” would be less than those experienced so far in the construction of the plant.

  There are no accounts of construction “accidents” in GECO’s records, although Hartley French recalls a construction worker falling twenty feet from the roof of a gallery, seriously injuring himself.

  The news article ended with a stellar list of amenities to be enjoyed at GECO including a bank, post office, laundry, doctor, fire brigade, police, and living accommodations.28 Many “perks” did come to fruition, but the Hamilton brothers already had abandoned trying to board their workforce, and there would be no police on site, only security guards.

  Producing required tools and equipment for the different natures was done in tandem with construction. All engineering and experimental work was transferred from 100 Adelaide St. West to Building No. 4, the electrical shop, mid-June 1941.29 Engineers used the first fuse-filling shop — Building No. 26 — that had been completed May 28, to work out the details of equipment needed for other filling shops nearing completion.

  Miss Dorothy Cheesman, GECO’s first secretary, transferred from 1218 Danforth Avenue to the plant site when the administration building opened.

  Hitler’s Fate Sealed

  June 16, 1940, started like any other day at the flourishing GECO site. Bulldozers and diggers still took centre stage, while “Tony’s” sandwich bar in the corner of a makeshift baseball diamond drew steady business from thousands of keen and dedicated workers.30 Tradesmen and stenographers, technicians and accountants, engineers and “trainees” all dined in a “fresh air canteen” along the country roadside. However, there was one definitive difference this day. This would be a day Hitler and his hordes would live to regret. Not only were the first filling shops nearing completion, but the first batch of Danforth Tech “trainees” had arrived that morning — men and women who had been trained, ready to fill fuses in the now formally opened Shop 26D.31 Production was underway.

  Yes, GECO still had to iron out the kinks, but “Scarboro,” as a full-fledged munitions factory, was in production. Over the course of a hot, hazy, humid summer, close to one hundred additional buildings would open, and hundreds upon hundreds of predominantly female fuse-fillers would be hired, trained, and put to good work, eager to join in the battle for freedom. That average sunny day in June held the promise of greater things to come.

  3

  A Mini City Tucked Behind an Eight-Foot Barbed-Wire Fence

  The Hamiltons and their expert staff based Scarboro’s design and layout on the No. 7 munitions plant built during the First World War in Hayes, England.1 GECO needed to meet both quality and quantity targets, filling the greatest number of fuses in the shortest time, with the least wastage of materials, in the safest manner. GECO’s design reflected these high ideals, ideals embodied in such details as the optimization of inter-building distances, the storage of explosives, the design of machinery, and the handling of personnel.

  Isolating operations involved in filling a munition within one building minimized widespread damage should an explosion occur from handling high explosives.2 Scarboro was split into two distinct areas: at the north end of the plant there was a “safe,” or “dirty,” side, where operations not specifically related to munitions were situated; at the south end of the plant, which encompassed the vastly larger portion of the GECO site, there was a “Danger Zone,” or “clean” side, where munitions were filled.3 Workers on the clean side wore special clothing and shoes that would minimize static electricity, and they followed stringent anti-spark rules in meticulously clean workshops.4

  Aerial view of GECO looking southwest from Building No. 94. One of the ninety-ton coal bunkers can be seen in the foreground. “Pennsylvania Slack” fuelled boilers that produced steam to heat the facility, with the heating system’s main line running throughout the underground tunnel system. Courtesy of Archives of Ontario.

  Taking Sides

  The administration building and many other buildings servicing the plant and employees were situated along the north end of the plant at Eglinton Avenue, running south to below present-day Civic Road. Service buildings on the dirty side of the plant included the administration building (No. 1), the guardhouse and clock house where employees punched in (No. 98), the time office and personnel building (No. 2), purchasing and a bank (No. 3), operating stores and engineering (No. 126), a garage (No. 89), a medical centre (No. 86), a fire hall and ambulance facilities (No. 90), the paint shop (No. 92), and inflammable stores (No. 141).5 Service buildings situated below Civic Road included the massive cafeteria (No. 13), a textile shop (No. 21) and chemical lab (No. 144), seven large change houses (Nos. 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, 24, and 25), the power plant (Nos. 11 and 12), and laundry facilities (No. 9).6 In addition, several workshops for site maintenance were housed on the dirty side of the site. Finally, the dirty side of the plant held two large water storage tanks and an excavated water reservoir as a precautionary measure against explosion or fire.7

  The clean side of the plant encompassed the vastly larger portion of the GECO plant.8

  Give Me a “U”!

  Bob and Phil Hamilton based Scarboro’s design and operation on British arsenal practice. Taking the view that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” they followed British methods as closely as possible until Canadian conditions and actual experience warranted changes and improvements.9 Under British practice, high explosives (H.E.) such as tetryl could not be handled in proximity to gunpowder (G.P.)10

  Essentially, GECO engineers incorporated two separate filling lines at the plant through establishing two groupings of buildings on the clean side of the plant: the “H.E. Group” where operators used high explosives to fill munitions,11 and the “G.P. Group” where gunpowder was used.12

  Clean-side buildings and filling shops were connected by an extensive system of covered corridors or “cleanways” running southward from Eglinton Avenue in a U-shaped formation.13 Directly beneath these gallerie
s ran a complex system of service tunnels carrying steam, water, and power lines.14

  GECO galleries, in which employees travelled from change houses to their munitions workshop were windowless — heated in winter and air-conditioned in summer. The galleries in this photograph probably spanned present-day Manville Road. Notice the “igloos” or “berms” that buried buildings. Also notice the small shed in the foreground, most likely a security booth. Courtesy of Archives of Ontario.

  At the base of the “U” sat the twelve-foot-wide North cleanway, providing access to employee change houses, as well as storage buildings for munitions components.15 The two arms of the “U” layout offered access to the G.P. and H.E. filling lines via ten-foot-wide cleanways.16 The two filling lines operated as separate munitions-filling plants — H.E. on the east side and G.P. to the west — complete with component stores, filling shops, bonded warehouses to store filled ammunition awaiting inspection, painting, soldering and packing shops, and shipping.17 Offices, tool rooms, personnel and first aid quarters, washrooms, and canteens, which served refreshments during work breaks, met each line’s non-production needs.18 Eight- and ten-foot-wide secondary cleanways branched off from the main arms, running east and west, giving access to the various fuse-filling-related shops.19 These secondary galleries were staggered, effectively preventing traffic congestion in the main cleanways during shift changes. Bulk magazines (structures built to house explosives), pellet pressing shops, and X-ray inspection served both H.E. and G.P. lines, accessed via two “crossover” galleries bridging the east and west cleanways between the open ends of the “U” in the southern section of the clean area.20