New immigrant Peggy, who was more than likely pregnant with Stella’s sister, had her story ready. If anyone should ask of the boys’ whereabouts — not that anyone in Canada would know of their existence — she would tell them the boys had drowned. About seven months after landing on Canadian soil, Peggy gave birth to her fifth child.
Life in Canada was not any better for Peggy or her children. The writer in GECO’s newspaper account reported that Peggy and the girls spent cozy “evenings making quilts in aid of the British War Victims Fund.” Stella doesn’t remember anything “cozy.” There were many nights Peggy didn’t come home at all. “My mother was like a chameleon,” Stella said, “changing her story to suit the situation she found herself in.”61
While Peggy worked at a fever pitch at GECO, her children back in Scotland enlisted and served their country heroically during the war. One joined the RAF and the other the Royal Navy.
After the war ended and GECO closed its doors, Peggy, with her husband no longer in her life, moved on, securing a position as a cook aboard the cruise ship the S.S. Noronic. During Peggy’s time in service, in the early morning hours of September 17, 1949, the Noronic caught fire while docked in Toronto.62 Of 524 passengers, close to 120 people lost their lives.63 While the cause of the fire remains a mystery, some say it started in a linen closet.64
When Stella was fourteen, she learned she had two older brothers when her mom inadvertently blurted out that she had left two sons in Dundee. Stella, shocked, sought out her newfound siblings and located them. In 1956, almost twenty years after deserting her children, Peggy returned to Scotland to reunite with her boys.
Peggy died in 1964, at fifty-six years of age, from pancreatic cancer.
Some may challenge this second account of Peggy MacKay’s life — it’s almost as extraordinary as her own tale told seventy years ago, so convincingly, to a wartime journalist. In the end, neither story’s merit matters. What matters is that Peggy MacKay, truly a “woman of sorrow,” and despite perhaps serious mental health issues, worked her fingers to the bone for the Allied forces. What matters is that her children, despite their mother’s alleged abuse and abandonment, were able to rally, marry, and have children of their own. “Peggy gave birth to five children, and we all suffered from the decisions she made,” Stella said, “but I’m so proud of my mother for the work she did for the war.”65
Today, Stella lives in Pefferlaw, Ontario, with her daughter and family.
A Breath of Fresh Ayr: Mary Plain
Mary “Maimie” Plain brings a distinctive perspective to women’s war work in Canada. Before she emigrated, she worked at the Stamping and Engineering Company in Ayr, Scotland.
Maimie was born in Ayr, a quaint fishing village about thirty miles south of Glasgow. Because Britain had instituted mandatory war service requirements for both men and women, she was called up in 1942 at twenty years of age. “If you volunteered, you got to choose what [war work] you did,” Mary recalls.66 “If not, you were conscripted and you did what they told you to.”67 Maimie was given three choices: work at “Naffi,” a canteen service for the military; work for the Land Army, which entailed working on a farm; or work at the stamping and engineering factory. Convinced she “would get ringworm and eaten alive by midges” doing farm work, Maimie opted to help manufacture tanks.68
Maimie worked on a Keller Die Sinking Machine cutting patterns out of a large piece of steel about the size of a dining room table, to be used for plane or tank parts. She cut two patterns, identical in size, and then placed them together to form a mould. The mould was transported to the forge, where one pattern was put into the top hammer, and the other into the bottom hammer. Workers poured molten steel into the hammers and pressed the steel into the mould. Men helped set up the steel. Cranes — operated by women — were used to move big pieces of steel. Girls sharpened the cutters and they also made rockers, a small piece needed for planes. “It took thirty-two hours to cut rockers,” Maimie recollects.69 “Sometimes a whole week to cut a mould.”70
Like her Canadian counterparts, she worked shifts, but the similarities end there. Her workweek totalled fifty-four hours over six days, either on days or nights. As the war progressed, labour laws slackened and the factory “could make you work any hours they wanted.”71 While she was used to hard work, she found it “miserable to work the night shift especially from midnight to six a.m.”72 Maimie earned about three pounds a week. However, “the faster you worked,” she says, “they paid bonuses.”73
She wore overalls, as GECO workers did, but there were few other stipulations since she did not work with explosives. She wore her brother’s two-piece coveralls. “Easier to use the washroom!” she quips.74 She donned a cap as well, with no hair showing. “If you leaned forward your hair could get caught.”75 At some point, she recalls upgrading to wooden-soled shoes to protect her feet from sharp steel shavings. There was no protection for her eyes or from the “deafening noise in the forge.”76
Men badgered the women — they did not think women could do the work. Instead of saying, “Give us the tools, and we’ll finish the job,” men would call out, “Give us the job and we’ll finish the tools.”77 She recalls a particularly bad accident when the top hammer in the forge dropped too fast, dislodging a support pole and impaling a man. Emergency personnel had a hard time getting the injured man into the ambulance. Remarkably, the pole did not puncture any organs and he survived.
As a young woman, Maimie appreciated the more subtle benefits to being at war in Scotland. Ayr was awash in troops, and Maimie loved to dance. “Loads of eager partners!” she says, smiling.78 She danced with Englishmen, Irishmen, Australians, New Zealanders, and Americans. She loved the Canadian boys, calling them “lovely boys with lovely manners.”79 John Shearer, in the Signal Corps during the war, attended a dance after demobilizing in 1946, where he met Maimie. They were married two years later, and welcomed their only child, a little girl, in 1949.
While Britain had returned to a time of peace, the debt to its allies kept the nation poor. “Housing was so bad you couldn’t find a place to live,” Maimie explains.80 “You put your name in for housing but there was close to a twenty-year wait. In fact, you couldn’t even put your name on the waiting list.”81 So, like countless others before them, John and Maimie left their homeland in 1954, looking for a better life in Canada. Today, Maimie, now ninety-two, lives in Toronto, enjoying her time with her family, especially her three grandsons.
“Fireball”: Edith Reay-Laidler
Eliza Head was a survivor. She entered the world December 30, 1896, born into the socio-economically depressed eastside of London, England. Two little brothers came along quickly, and tragically, after Eliza’s little sister was born when Eliza was four, her mother abandoned the family, leaving her dad to care for his four children on his own. Unable to provide for his family, and knowing the wretched future the girls faced if they stayed in London with him, he gave up Eliza and her sister to live in Dr. Barnardo’s Home for Orphans when Eliza was seven and her little sister was just three years old.
Thomas John Barnardo, while training to be a doctor in London, witnessed the abject poverty of homeless children sleeping in the streets and begging for food.82 Barnardo believed every child, regardless of their social or economic upbringing, was valued, and deserved a chance to reach their potential. In an effort to give these waifs a better life, he started his first “Home” in 1870, at the age of twenty-five.83 At the time of his death in 1905, Barnardo had affected the lives of more than a quarter of a million destitute children.84 About thirty thousand children immigrated to Canada between 1869 and 1939.85 Sadly, while some were able to better their lives, many suffered abuse at the hands of their “adoptive” families.
Victims of circumstance, Eliza and her sister lived in a home for orphans, run by Dr. Barnardo in England at the turn of the twentieth century. Dr. Barnardo shipped them to Canada when Eliza was fourteen, where she lived and toiled on three farms over four years.
When Eliza turned eighteen she left the farm, changed her name to Edith, and headed to Toronto to work toward a better life. Courtesy Ronald Reay-Laidler.
Eliza was fourteen when she was sent across the ocean to Canada to live with “foster parents.” She, along with the more than four hundred other children aboard the ship, had to earn their way working on farms once they arrived. Eliza lived and toiled for four years on three different farms in Southern Ontario. When she turned eighteen, she turned her back on her sad life, changed her name to Edith, and headed for Toronto.
Edith thought that, as one of Canada’s biggest cities, Toronto offered the best chance for a bright future. The Toronto Carpet Company hired her as a weaver. At first, they told her she was too small, but she insisted she could do anything, despite her tiny frame. True to her word, she worked hard and became their head weaver. Each year during Canada’s National Exhibition, held at the end of August, Edith would demonstrate weaving to hundreds of thousands of passersby.
Edith met Hector Reay-Laidler while working at the carpet company and they were married in 1921. They raised two girls and a boy, their youngest, Roland, who was born in 1929. When war broke out, Edith, wanting to do her part for the war, started at GECO as it got underway in 1941. At about forty-four years of age, she sneaked in under GECO’s upper age limit by one year.
Roland, at the age of twelve, remembers that his mom worked shifts at GECO. She spoke about the tunnels, referring to them as the “underground,” but loyal to her oath of secrecy, she did not mention much more.
Times were tough during the war. Roland remembers his mom giving him a quarter to go stand in line at Woodgreen, a social agency nearby, to buy used clothes. Although there was much rationing, they never did without. Roland, even today, marvels at how well his mom managed food and material shortages. He jokingly suggests his mom, a “fireball,” probably traded ration coupons amongst her neighbours and GECO friends to take care of her children.
From their home on Main Street, Edith walked to Danforth Avenue, then over to Dawes Road to catch the GECO bus. Roland fondly recalls walking his mom to the bus stop sometimes. In 1942, the family moved to Wheeler Avenue, “down the beach,” close to Kew Beach off Queen Street. Committed to her job at GECO, the extra-long commute did little to deter Edith.
Edith’s petite stature was a source of fond stories. She was so small she wore a blue one-piece children’s snowsuit to work in the frosty winter months.
Edith and her husband Hector, both from England, were proud of their British heritage and instilled that pride in their family. Roland had a shirt he wore during the war that read, “There will always be an England.”
Edith’s sister had returned to England to settle down when she was still a young woman. Edith visited England as an adult, but Canada had become her home. The sisters shared a cordial but distant friendship. Hector passed away in October 1983; Edith died three days short of her ninety-sixth birthday, on December 27, 1992.
Widow with Five Children: Winifred Stewart
Winifred Dady never shied away from hard work or adventure. Born in 1901 in East Suffolk, England, she joined Britain’s Land Army during the Great War. When the war ended, the Women’s Branch of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries awarded Winifred a “Certificate for Farm Work Efficiency,” having earned a grade of 95 percent for thatching.
Winifred, then eighteen, along with her sister, sailed to Canada looking for fun. They had a grand plan: see the sights, cross the country to see the Pacific Ocean, and then head home. Winifred got as far as Toronto, where she met a handsome Scottish immigrant, Lockhart Stewart, at a dance, and fell in love. Her sister continued the journey, travelling as far as Vancouver, where she met her future husband.
A milkman with Silverwoods Dairy, Lockhart made Winifred his blushing bride in 1923. They settled in the west end of the city and welcomed five children to their family, but the Depression years hit the family hard and they moved around a lot trying to make rent. Tragically, Lock developed stomach cancer and died in 1940, leaving Winifred a widow with five children to raise, their youngest only a toddler. With Lock’s life insurance, she bought a home, but she needed to find a job. Thankfully, there were many wartime positions available. Winifred worked at several wartime factories — Massey Harris, GECO, and D.I.L. in Ajax. Commuting to work was difficult; Winifred rode the Bloor streetcar across the city before meeting up with a bus to travel to GECO, and to D.I.L. in later war years.
Home life was a struggle. Lock’s mother moved in to help. Their daughter, Audrey, at fifteen, helped babysit her younger siblings so mom could do shiftwork at GECO. Winifred took in two boarders, Ellen and Zella, from Calgary. They too worked at GECO. Winifred packed powder into fuses at the plant. She was very proud of the work she did to help the war effort. “Mom was proper English,” Audrey remembers, “with a stiff upper lip. She did what she had to do.”86
Winifred’s oldest, Roy, joined the RCAF and flew as a mid-upper gunner during the war. He did two tours over Germany, surviving a narrow escape when enemy shrapnel narrowly missed his head. Roy returned home to his mother after the war, but in a tragic twist of fate, died from cancer six years later at the age of thirty-one.
With Canada now at peace, Winifred lost her job. As a single parent, she still needed a steady income; she found a job at Steadman’s, a department store. Tragically, cancer would enter Winifred’s life a third time, touching her personally when she developed cancer of the breast. While she lived another twelve years, the cancer returned and Winifred died in 1959.
D.I.L. Gal: Rena Sweetman
Rena Sweetman answered an advertisement for war work in 1941 at the age of nineteen, keen to earn money to help support her widowed mother and eleven siblings. Rena applied for work at the brand new shell-filling plant in Ajax, operated by D.I.L, a “sister” plant to GECO.
There were many similarities between work at GECO and D.I.L. Like GECO, D.I.L. used special buses to transport employees. A bus picked Rena up at Danforth and Coxwell Avenues — one of GECO’s bus stops — and transported her, along with her co-workers, out to Ajax. However, the buses dropped them off directly at their workshop. The building housed everything the women needed for their shift, from change rooms to a café. Rena remembers being warned not to tell anyone where she worked or what she did.
D.I.L. employees wore a uniform similar to the clothing supplied at GECO, but theirs were grey and one-piece with navy blue turbans. However, unlike GECO, Rena recalls women not being allowed to keep on their brassieres or underwear. She had to strip down to the nude and walk naked a fair distance before she could don her jumpsuit. This practice was particularly awkward and uncomfortable for Rena and her workmates.
Rena worked at long tables set up as an assembly line. As small shells passed by, she put a marking on them. In another position she held at the plant, she worked with white powder under a glass while sitting at an enclosed cubicle, very similar to work done at GECO. However, unlike GECO, she had to wear a mask that covered her nose and mouth completely. In her naïveté, she did not realize the powder she handled had the potential to blow up her and her shop mates.
D.I.L. supervisors were strict but nice, and came from England since there was no one with munitions expertise in Canada at the time. Women were not permitted to talk while they worked — no singing either. She remembers being paid well. “It was wonderful,” she said “I could go out and buy a new dress.”87
Rena married Ross O’Hagan on November 28, 1941, shortly after starting at the plant. Ross was in the service but he got sick with pneumonia and pleurisy, lost most of one lung, and was discharged. Shortly after they were married, Rena and Ross moved into the barracks at the Malton Airfield. Rena received a wonderful Christmas present that first year: within a month of her wedding day, Rena learned she was pregnant. Fortunately, babies and high explosives did not mix. When she informed her supervisor at D.I.L., she was dismissed the same day. Her firstborn, a son, Barry, was born September 27,
1942. Three more little ones would arrive in the ensuing years, two within two years of the war ending. Her youngest, “the only planned one,” Rena explains with a twinkle in her eye, was born almost a decade later in 1956.88 Barry recalls their days living at the Malton Airfield. “We ran around every day getting dirty like little street urchins,” he says with a wistful smile.89 Rena and Ross lived at Malton until after the birth of their third child, and then they bought a house in the Avenue Road and Lawrence Avenue area of Toronto in 1949.
Ross had a long career working with Rogers Radio, in his nursery/florist business, and in real estate brokerage businesses. He died in 1983 at the age of sixty-four.
Rena, loving grandmother to eighteen and great-grandmother to eight, passed away in June 2013 at the age of ninety-one. While Rena’s days at D.I.L. were short, she did her part in helping to get ammunition into the hands of fighting men overseas.
Bench Leader: Norma Turner
Norma McGregor was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1918, but immigrated to Canada in 1924 with her mom and dad after the Irish Rebellion. Despite the Great Depression setting in, her dad, George, was fiercely proud that as a relief streetcar driver, he could support his family without asking for a handout. Norma grew up around Danforth Avenue and Dawes Road. During her final year of high school, she found a retail job for the Christmas season, earning seven to eight dollars a week. Coming from humble roots, and enjoying the pleasure of a little money in her pocket, she did not return to school in the New Year.
Norma worked for a few years before Canada went to war. She met her first husband, getting married in 1940. In the fall of 1941, as a young, married woman, she learned of a wartime plant opening in Scarboro. The starting salary of thirty-two and a half cents an hour was double her current salary. Like so many others, she was eager to take the lucrative job at GECO, where starting pay was $16 per week.
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