Bomb Girls

by Barbara Dickson

  Norma’s daughter, Victoria, remembers her mom telling her family she had to replace the metal clasps in her brassieres with buttons while at GECO to lessen the chance of causing a spark, and she had to touch a metal plate at the entrance to her filling workshop to remove all static electricity before going in.

  During Norma’s tenure at GECO she was promoted to bench leader. She supervised six other women who packed tetryl powder into detonators — highly dangerous work. The operators filled the detonators through protective glass to shield them from tetryl dust wafting up into their nostrils and faces and to provide some protection should an explosion occur.

  On a humorous note, Victoria recalls her mom complaining mildly to her family about a small but significant detail regarding the plant site. The sprawling factory was built on slightly rolling farmland gently rising from the shores of Lake Ontario. Every time she made the long walk to and from her shop, she felt as if she “was always walking uphill.”90

  Norma also spoke about the adventures she had with her workmates catching the “rattling old bus” at Dawes Road and Danforth Avenue. It seems it broke down a lot. One night the women had to get out and help push the bus up the hill on Dawes Road, where the Walter Massey Farm was situated. In another more lucrative adventure, Norma was able to save enough money at GECO to buy her first car, a 1935 Ford, even though she did not have a driver’s licence. The car stayed up on blocks during the war years due to rationing of gas and rubber. In addition to a new car, Norma saved $500 to help her parents buy a house that would stay in the family to present day.

  Norma worked at GECO from 1941 to 1943. Her family speculates she left after learning she was pregnant. Sadly, her firstborn, a baby boy, died at birth. A beautiful little girl came along a year later, but regrettably, Norma’s marriage failed. She moved back home to raise her little girl with her parents’ help.

  Her brother, who served in the Royal Canadian Navy and was a bachelor about town, brought home a friend a few years later who had served in the North Africa British Army Royal Engineers during the war. Richard Drake had drilled drinking wells to provide water for troops as they made their way through North Africa. He immigrated to Canada after the war as part of the “Drew Plan” — devised by Ontario premier George Drew, this plan brought ten thousand British immigrants to Canada. Richard met Norma at her parents’ cottage on Wagner’s Lake north of Uxbridge, Ontario, which they fondly called “Glocca Morra.” Norma was on the dock when she was introduced to Richard, who promptly tossed her into the lake. She couldn’t swim. She was not pleased but her mom told her to “give the poor boy a chance.” Richard and Norma married in November 1953, settled in Port Credit, Ontario, and Richard went to work as a plumber. Life was good. They added two more lovely girls to the family.

  Tragically, heartache would strike the family again, when, in 1960, at the age of forty-three, Richard suffered a brain aneurism. He survived risky surgery but became disabled and had to move into long-term care at Sunnybrook Hospital’s new Veterans’ unit. Norma returned to work and moved back home with her mom and dad to raise her three girls.

  Maria, Norma’s mom, died in 1966. She left the home her daughter helped buy, located just north of Danforth Avenue, to Norma. Norma lived a long life and died in 2009. Victoria, her daughter, resides in the family home today.

  In an interesting GECO connection, Norma’s brother, a pilot officer during the war, trained, before heading overseas, at both Malton and Fingal, two of GECO’s former wartime endeavours.

  “I Want to Work with Munitions”: Anne Wilmot

  Anne Wilmot was born in 1915 in Montreal, Quebec, shortly after her parents and two siblings moved from their homeland, Jamaica. As a pre-schooler, Anne and her family moved again, this time to Toronto, and settled in the Parkdale area, just west of the Dufferin Gates of the Canadian National Exhibition. She attended Queen Victoria School as a child and then took a four-year high-school course in secretarial studies at Western Technical and Commercial School near High Park, specializing in legal practices. When war broke out many of her friends and colleagues signed up for war work, either close to home at John Inglis, where guns were made, or in the far reaches of Scarboro, where a munitions plant was being built.

  Anne had heard about people who worked at GECO, that they had been sworn to secrecy. “No one knew anything about GECO,” Anne said.91 “GECO was really looking for people, and out of curiosity, I applied as a war worker, not a secretary.”92 Given Anne’s excellent secretarial skills, management wanted Anne to work in administration. “They didn’t think I would want to work on the line,” she said, “but I wanted to work in war work, with the munitions.”93

  A sense of pride still resonates when Anne, now ninety-seven, speaks about her time at GECO. “I worked for General Engineering, a well-known firm not just created for the war. I had to swear my allegiance,” she said.94 “You were sworn to silence because of secrecy during the war.”95

  She remembers riding the GECO buses, being dropped off at the front door, showing her pass at the guardhouse, heading to the change house where they donned 100 percent white cotton two-piece uniforms with buttons along the shoulder and down one side. She recalls the turbans they wore, and the special shoes. “You couldn’t have any metal on you at all. They were smart uniforms,” she said.96 “We had to strip down to our underwear, which had to be cotton.”97 Thin cotton undergarments did not offer much warmth against Canada’s harsh winters. “But we stuck it out,” Anne said.98 “I remember the Timothy Eaton Company was the only place the girls could buy cotton brassieres.”99 She also recalls her wages: “I made forty-nine cents an hour,” she claimed proudly.100

  Anne worked on the H.E. side of the plant, filling No. 119 fuses. She was aware of the strategy of the spacing between buildings. “There was enough space that if one shop blew up it wouldn’t affect other shops.”101 It was a sombre admission for a new employee. In fact, just two days after she started, during her one-week introduction period, there was an explosion in one of the shops. “No one was hurt,” Anne said, thankfully.102 Undeterred, Anne worked at GECO, faithfully filling 119s until the war ended, and only a skeleton staff remained at GECO.

  Anne Parkin (née Wilmot) with nephew Brian Roberts in 2009. Although Anne had excellent secretarial skills and would have been an asset to GECO’s administration, she wanted to do her part for the Allied war effort and asked to work with munitions. She worked with tetryl, a dangerous high explosive that turned her skin orange. Courtesy of Brian Roberts.

  Anne worked with tetryl powder. As a young black woman, the explosive powder turned her skin orange, not yellow, like those with fairer skin. “My fingernails turned orange,” she said, “and the bottoms of my feet and the palms of my hands. You had to be careful or you’d get a rash.”103 Anne did get tetryl rash once, but it cleared before long. Some women suffered more. “You could get a horrific rash.”104

  To Anne, GECO was a big place, filled with dedicated people wanting to do their bit for the war. “There were nationalities of all kinds at GECO,” she said.105 She said she was accepted readily and felt no discrimination.

  When asked, “Where do you work?” Anne answered simply, “I’m doing war work.”106

  After the war, Anne moved to Vancouver and worked for a family friend in his burgeoning law practice. Anne met and married Al Parkin, and while she had no children of her own, she became stepmother to Al’s daughter. Today, Anne continues to reside in British Columbia.

  Anne’s nephew Brian says of his aunt, “Anne is a selfless person caring more for another person instead of herself. If there is a place last in line Anne would be glad to take it. That is her nature. She is my favourite aunt.”107

  “Shamed Be He Who Thinks Evil of It”: Roxaline Wood

  When Canada went to war in 1939, Walter and Roxaline Wood and family lived in the back of the blacksmith’s shop situated on the northwest corner of Pharmacy and Lawrence Avenues in Scarboro. The Canadian government mandated th
at war workers take the bus to work. Since local bus service ended at Danforth Avenue in the early 1940s, the government apportioned gas tickets to Roxaline’s neighbour so he, another GECO employee, could drive her to and from the plant.

  Roxaline, like GECOite Carol LeCappelain, worked as a government inspector at the munitions plant, ensuring top quality ammunition for the Allied forces. Her son, Bruce, “Bob” to family and friends, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force when he came of age, and flew over one hundred missions in the fight to end the war in Europe.

  Roxaline’s son Ron remembers the big snowstorm in December 1944. When they woke the morning after the storm, he had to help dig out their ’42 Ford, which had been buried completely in huge snowdrifts, so that his dad, Walter, could get to work.

  When the war ended, the Inspection Board of the United Kingdom and Canada issued a card recognizing Roxaline’s dedicated service. The card displayed a crest with the phrase, “HONI - SOIT - QUI - MAL - Y - PENSE” or “Shamed be he who thinks evil of it.” Controller General, Major General G.D. Howe, signed it.

  The card read:

  This is to Certify that Mrs. Roxiline [sic] Wood served as an employee of this Board from 11-7-42 to 8-6-45 and was engaged in duties directly connected with the Inspection of War Materials for the Armed Forces.108

  Ron was too young to work at GECO filling munitions; however, as a firefighter for the Scarborough Fire Department in his adult years, he did “work” at GECO, battling a blaze that broke out in one of the old buildings off Sinnott Road. Ron also spent the latter half of his firefighting career in the Training Division. He enjoyed taking rookie firefighters down into the old GECO tunnels to teach them how to manage a fire “if ever one broke out.”109 Ron enjoyed a thirty-one-year career with Scarborough’s fire department, retiring prior to their amalgamation with Toronto.

  Walter Wood, the youngest of twelve children, passed away in 1986 at the age of ninety-two. Roxaline, a sister to eleven siblings, lived to ninety-two years of age as well, and passed away in 2000.

  Bomb Boys

  On the Dirty Side

  Someone’s Got to Pay the Bills: William Howe

  Classified as “C1” due to vision problems, William “Bill” Howe thought he would not be recruited into active service. His father had fought in the trenches at Passchendaele during the Great War. Bill understood all too well the horrors of war. Nevertheless, as luck would have it, he received a call-up notice in 1942, at the age of nineteen, with his classification jumping from C1 to A3. He had a choice: enlist in the armed forces or work in a war plant. Not wanting to relive his father’s First World War experience, he chose GECO, joining Accounts Payable for nine dollars a week in the administration building.

  Because Bill worked in administration, he did not see the clean side. “I saw nothing to do with the actual filling of fuses. I never got down to the bottom end of the plant,” he says.110 “It was a city unto itself.”111 He knew about the tunnel system but did not see it. He did see women with yellowed hands and “towels (turbans) around their heads.”112

  Running a top-secret government-owned munitions plant came with its own set of headaches. Bill remembers the year he spent at GECO as “a real rat race. I sat down at a desk,” he recalls, “with bills to pay with a whole bunch of invoices. I had to sort through them. It was hit and miss with no real bookkeeping. We sometimes paid bills twice. There were boxes and boxes of material and receipts.”113 Around a half-dozen employees worked with Bill in A/P. “We couldn’t pay a bill unless you had an MRR (Material Received Report) attached to it. Then it was okayed for payment and went to Checks to be paid.”114 On the weekends, Bill, along with a colleague, worked on improving the A/P system at GECO.

  Bill enjoyed GECO’s extra-curricular activities, playing softball with the “Operating Stores” team. “We had a really good time there. It was a picnic.”115 In fact, his interest in the finer things at GECO almost got the young accountant fired. He dated a fellow GECOite a few times, and when she needed a drive to the airport, Bill left work to help. “I got in trouble,” he says.116 “It got around that I might be fired.”117 So he hastily looked for another job, and found one at R.E.L. — Research Enterprises Limited — starting at $18 a week — double his GECO wages. “I quit before they could fire me.”118 Did his dedication to the young lady pay off? Apparently, Bill never heard from her again.

  In March 1944, Bill was called up again, the need for fighting men now desperate. “No bloody way I’m going into the army,” Bill said at the time.119 The Canadian Army had other plans. He had no choice but to enlist and do basic training. He was sent to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to prepare to ship out. Getting out of fighting did not look good, but Bill had a friend who worked on the Draft Board and told him he “could go anywhere.” So Bill was assigned to HMCS Niobe in Greenock, Scotland, then to Portsmouth, and then to Northern Ireland. The most action Bill saw occurred when he and a pal were caught wearing their military uniforms — a treasonable offence — in Ireland, a neutral country during the war. The police swiftly shipped them back to Northern Ireland.

  Bill was on leave in Canada when the war ended. In 1954, he married Marie, a family friend, and raised a family of four. He enjoyed a long, successful career with Canada Customs. Bill passed away in May 2013, in his ninetieth year, and is survived by his wife, Marie, children, and grandchildren.

  “Piston Packin’ Moma”: Donald John “D.J.” MacDonald

  Some personal stories of GECO employees tug at the heartstrings more than others. Donald John MacDonald’s story will tug a little harder than most.

  “D.J.” was born April 7, 1911, in Hillside, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. At the tender age of just three, he was given up by his parents. Unable to care for him, they gave him to his grandparents, who took him in and raised him. Sadly, he never returned home. “His own brothers and sisters didn’t even know him,” D.J.’s son Phillip says.120

  Despite dealing with a profound sense of loss and abandonment as a small child, D.J. managed to grow up, marry, and have a large family of his own. Tragically, his namesake, little Donald Francis, died from muscular dystrophy when he was just a toddler.

  D.J. established himself in the construction industry on the East Coast in the 1930s. When Canada went to war, he heard about work in Ontario and moved west to help build a wartime munitions plant, situated in Scarboro. He asked his close friend, native Ontarian Joe Sullivan, to join him. After construction was completed, D.J. stayed on at GECO as manager for mechanical services and as master mechanic. “He was in charge,” his son Stanley writes in a letter about his dad, “of what might be referred to as ‘rolling stock.’”121 D.J. was also manager for transportation services. This once-rejected little boy had been given the honour of overseeing GECO’s massive fleet of vehicles. His friend Joe would become foreman for the Trucking Department.122

  D.J. helped design and build GECO’s famous “Blue Goose,” a big blue twelve-passenger station wagon “He had the capacity to cut down cars that were no good,” Phillip recalls, “weld them together and put them on a frame, like a stretch limo.”123

  GECO’s “Blue Goose.” Courtesy of Stanley MacDonald.

  Stanley agrees. “It was lengthened by cutting it in two, and inserting the two rear-passenger car sections, between the two pieces, thus making it a twelve-passenger car.”124

  In addition to the Blue Goose, D.J. and his team built munitions trucks, ambulances, fire trucks, and taxis at GECO, including Station Wagon No. 28, affectionately dubbed “Piston Packin’ Moma” by the mechanics. Decades later Phillip wonders aloud what became of his father’s fleet.

  After the war ended, D.J. went to work for Standard Paving, taking “a bunch of GECOites with him,” Phillip says.125 Later on, he and some of his friends worked at his own company, MacDonald Construction, on Kennedy Road in Scarborough. His company constructed roads and other structures in Ontario, including most of Highway No. 7, north of the city.

  Pictured here with his
department staff, Donald John MacDonald (front row, middle), manager of Mechanical Services and master mechanic, oversaw GECO’s massive fleet of vehicles. Courtesy of Phillip MacDonald.

  “He asked a lot from his guys, but if you put in a day’s work, you got paid for it. If the sun was shining, they were out working. They worked long hours in the summer time.”126 Was he a good father? “He was fair and patient,” Phillip says.127 “‘No’ meant ‘no’ but I don’t remember getting punished.” He recalls fondly, “Our backyard was a construction playground.”128

  Donald John MacDonald passed away at the age of eighty-one on Remembrance Day 1992 while undergoing heart surgery.

  Keep on Truckin’: Joe Sullivan

  James Joseph Sullivan, familiarly known as Joe, entered the world on October 6, 1910, at the family’s two-hundred-acre farm in Dornoch, Ontario, a small town south of Owen Sound. Joe originally envisioned a career in ministry as a young adult, but after the early death of his father, he left the seminary and moved to Nova Scotia to try his hand at construction. He helped build Sydney Airport during the 1930s. His sweetheart, Grace Irene, followed him to Nova Scotia, where they were married in 1934. Kerry, their firstborn, arrived the next year. Two more children would follow in close succession. Family history suggests that during this time in Joe’s career, he met and established a close lifelong friendship with Nova Scotian Donald John (D.J.) MacDonald, who worked for the same construction company.

  When Canada declared war on Germany, Joe was too old to go overseas. His friend D.J. headed to Ontario to help build a munitions plant in Scarboro. Joe soon followed, packing up his young family in their ’37 Chevrolet and moving back to his home province. “Dad’s way of helping [in the war] was working in the munitions plant,” Kerry, Joe’s eldest son, said.129 “Dad went from driving a field truck at Standard Paving to being in management at GECO,” Jim, Joe’s youngest son added.130 “It was quite a change going from equipment operator to running a staff.”131