In 1939 Canada went to war, and eighteen months later excavation started on expropriated farmland located just northwest of their store for a sprawling munitions plant. The Everest family was given the unique opportunity to do their part for the war effort by delivering supplies and provisions to GECO. John remembers delivering sacks of potatoes to the military site. He still recalls one time when they arrived at GECO’s main gated entrance on Eglinton Avenue and he hopped out of the truck, expecting to unload the potatoes. “I would have been around twelve to fourteen at the time,” he said.178 “Security was very effective — I was ordered back to the truck.”179 John, no matter how curious, was prohibited from stepping through the barbed-wire gates.
By the time John joined the family business in 1948, his family owned four trucks and delivered everything from milk and bread to seed and basic hardware, making several hundred deliveries per week. Everest Grocers evolved post war, eventually turning into a Pro Hardware store, with John at the helm. John married and had two children, and his son helped in the store until John retired and closed the business in 2002. “I couldn’t keep up with the big box stores,” he said.180 Ironically, these big box stores were built next to the old GECO plant where he’d delivered potatoes sixty years earlier.
Today, John lives with his wife in south Scarborough and maintains a local archive in St. Paul’s United Church, commemorating the Scarboro Junction of which GECO was a part. As a lasting tribute, in September 2014 muralist Mitchell Lanecki painted a mural on St. Clair Ave. east of Warden Ave., to commemorate the Everest family store and the Junction.
Truck ’Em and Fill ’Em: Sidney Ledson and Family
Sidney Ledson worked at GECO for about nine months in 1942, before he was old enough to enlist. He joined as a “trucker,” responsible for the delicate transportation of skids of munitions around the plant, including empty and filled primers, timers, fuses, bomb components, and tracers. Sometimes his job included the precarious and potentially perilous undertaking of stacking trays of explosives one on top of another on a skid. Even the smallest misstep could have meant a deadly detonation. Sidney worked exclusively on the gunpowder side of the plant. “I got around quite a bit on the clean side,” he said.181
Sidney has many memories of his short time at GECO. He recalls taking the bus from Dawes Road and Danforth Avenue for the approximately fifteen-minute ride out to “the wilds of GECO out in the country.”182 To a seventeen-year-old like Sidney, GECO “felt like a huge place.”183
Sidney remembers the lockers and showers in the change house, and how they stripped down to their briefs and socks, leaving “smokes” and matches in their lockers, along with rings and watches. They were not allowed to chew gum. The men stepped over the barrier onto the clean side and donned their white GECO uniforms. Once on the clean side, Sidney took the main north/south gallery on the west or gunpowder side of the plant to the trucker’s office to check in and prepare for his shift. He recalls the galleries as being wide, windowless, and quiet, with little traffic except during shift changes. As all munitions and components were transported through the gallery system, he never saw GECO’s elaborate tunnel system.
Sidney recalls fondly impromptu wrestling matches breaking out among the young truckers when work was slow. Sidney also had a stint working in a fuse-filling workshop, made up predominantly of women, with only a few men working who were either unfit for service, too young, or too old to go to war. Women poured gunpowder into the metal ring of a fuse, secured within a framework, and placed a brass ring on top. They then handed the unit to Sidney. He placed the frame into a press and pumped a lever until the desired pressure — to, as Sidney says, “squash the gunpowder” down into the ring — was achieved.184 When he relieved the pressure, the gunpowder was evenly compressed within the ring, ready for the next operation in filling.
Like many other GECOites, working at GECO was a family affair for the Ledson family. Sidney’s mother, Lillian, and his sister also worked there, though they did not work the same shifts as Sidney and he does not recall what they did.
Sidney fondly remembers how on hot evenings during the summer months, the doors to the workshops would be opened and they would watch the dewfall.185
As the war dragged on, more and more men were called up, especially once conscription started, leaving more jobs for women to fill. Female “truckerettes” stepped into the breach and took over the transportation of munitions around the plant. This shipment was headed to D.I.L. in Pickering, Ontario, in 1943. Courtesy of Archives of Ontario.
When Sidney reached the age of eighteen, he left GECO and joined the RCAF. His training took him to Moose Jaw, Montreal, and then to Yarmouth, where he stayed for the duration of war. As the war dragged on, more and more men were called up, especially once conscription started, leaving more jobs for women to fill. Female “truckerettes” stepped into the breach and took over the transportation of munitions around the plant.
After the war, Sidney, always with a zest for life, attended the Ontario College of Art, becoming an accomplished artist. He has written nine books, and founded the Sidney Ledson Institute for Intellectual Advancement, where children as young as two years of age, are taught to read.
Modern Misses: The Neufeld Gals
Margaret Neufeld was born in 1921 at home on her family’s farm in Aberdeen, Saskatchewan. Her Mennonite father, Abraham, fell in love with her mother, Helen, a Hudderite, and married against their families’ wishes. Their families, church, and community shunned the young couple for their “scandalous union.”186 Abraham and Helen had fourteen children; only nine survived. Tragically, Helen died giving birth to Margaret’s little sister, leaving Abraham to raise nine children, one a newborn, alone. Margaret was only seven years old when her mom died. The family heartache did not end there. Abraham and the children lost everything when their farmhouse burned down.
Abraham raised his family with sheer grit and determination. Margaret and eight siblings grew up, Canada declared war, her five brothers went off to fight, and in 1943, at the age of twenty-two, Margaret saw an ad in the local paper offering employment at a wartime plant in Scarboro, Ontario, thousands of miles away. She was tired of the Saskatchewan wind and rural life. This was the perfect opportunity to leave the Prairies and head for the big city. Her sister, at sixteen, accompanied her to Toronto. GECO paid their expenses up front and then deducted a small portion each paycheque to repay the debt.
Margaret was glad to be off the Prairies. She embraced life at GECO, loving the food, the camaraderie, and the work. She filled bullets on the gunpowder side of the plant. She bowled in GECO’s league.
As an attractive young woman, she turned the heads of more than one GECO fellow. One would-be suitor made a maple leaf broach for her out of hammered steel. Another admirer made her a broach from a bullet casing. She was invited to enter the Miss War Worker Beauty Contest, but she politely declined. Margaret met the handsome William Hermann at a YWCA dance in Toronto in April 1945, just before the war ended. He was in the RCAF, stationed to Mountainview A.F.B. in Belleville, Ontario, during the war, repairing aircraft. William had brought another girl to the dance but took one look at Margaret and dumped his date. After William took Margaret home, he realized he only knew her name and that she worked for a place called “Gee-Ko.”187 He wrote GECO’s personnel manager asking about the lovely girl from the dance. The manager wrote back, “I have found your Margaret and your inquiry was met with a warm response.”188 A whirlwind romance ensued, with the couple marrying two months later.
Margaret’s sister headed home after the war and eventually settled in Alberta. All the Neufeld men made it home from the war safely.
GECOite and modern-miss Margaret Neufeld (on far right in a plaid skirt) enjoying an evening of bowling with her shop mates. Courtesy of Archives of Ontario.
Margaret’s husband, William, worked for a company called Columbia Products, and in his later years for the Scarborough Board of Education where Margaret worked a
s well. William and Margaret raised four children.
Margaret’s adventurous spirit sustained her throughout her life. Family and friends considered her a Suffragette. She had her own bank account, independent from her husband, in the 1960s. Tamara, Margaret’s daughter, summed up her mom nicely: “Mom was a modern miss.”189
Zaida’s GECO Becomes Son’s Wonderland
When the Simerson family moved to Scarboro in 1939, they settled in an old farmhouse located on Rosemount Drive, which they bought from a gentleman named John Hough. At the time, Mr. Hough owned a good-sized tract of land, including a large farm and a carriage shop located at Birchmount Road and Eglinton Avenue. Neither the Hough nor Simerson family could have predicted that, two years later, King George VI of Britain would expropriate Hough’s land, as well as other landowner’s holdings, to build GECO.190
The Simersons lived so close to the future site of the munitions plant, it was an easy decision for Mary “Zaida” Simerson, thirty-five, to apply for work at GECO when it started its massive hiring campaign in the fall of 1941. A dedicated employee, Zaida was the embodiment of the early working mother. She worked rotating shifts full-time, kept house, and raised seven children. In fact, GECO was a family affair in the Simerson household. Two of Zaida’s daughters also worked at GECO.
Greg Jr. remembers his mom and sisters’ days at GECO. He recalls the women talking about the uniform, how workers could not wear their hair down. They talked about the dirty and clean sides of the plant, and how they called, “All Clear!” when they stepped over the barrier to the clean side.
Although Greg was too young to work at GECO — not yet a teenager — he was a typical boy and always up for adventure. There are a couple of special GECO memories that remain fresh in his mind seventy years later. During the winter months, Greg chased a puck around a hockey rink set up on GECO’s premises. What made this time extra sweet was sharing the ice with men from the Royal Navy, and in particular, one fellow named Gaye Stewart, who, barely out of high school, had played with the National Hockey League’s Toronto Maple Leafs.191 Greg was too small to play offence — or defence for that matter — so he played goal. During one game, a flying puck hit him in the nose. “Kid, you’d better go home,” Gaye Stewart told him, but Greg was so thrilled to be part of the game he refused and kept playing, bloody nose and all.192
Greg’s brush with celebrity did not end with the war. When GECO was adapted into post war emergency housing, a sports field was set up across from Sinnott Road. Greg played touch football with GECO resident Don Getty, who not only went on to be a quarterback with the Edmonton Eskimos, winning two Grey Cup championships, but became the Honourable Donald R. Getty, eleventh premier of the province of Alberta, holding that office from 1985 until 1992.193
After the war, various businesses moved into the area, establishing the Golden Mile along Eglinton Avenue. Greg still recalls one plant erected on Warden Avenue where aerosol cans would explode from time to time. “They were like bombs landing,” Greg says, “coming all the way to Rosemount. We had to put out these lit missiles.”194
The Simerson family eventually built two new homes on Rosemount Drive. When Greg married in 1956, he and his bride, Fran, moved into his parents’ old house. Greg worked with the Scarborough Fire Department for thirty-two years.
“Hefty Work”: Peter Cranston
In 1944, Peter Cranston was a seventeen-year-old high-school student looking for a summer job. He headed to National Selective Service’s office on Spadina Avenue in downtown Toronto to be placed where most needed. GECO was at the top of the list. The thought of filling munitions did not bother Peter. He felt, along with his fellow Canadians, that at the time it was a just and necessary war, and that meant doing whatever it took to stop Hitler.
Peter recalls the strict rules associated with working for a munitions plant. In the men’s change house, he stripped down to his underclothes, stored his street clothes in a locker, then stepped over a barrier to the clean side and declared himself all clear; all under the watchful eye of a guard. “After donning a white coverall including shoes with no metal in them,” Peter recalls, “and a cap covering your hair, you walked to your work station.”195
Peter was trained with a team of several young men as a trucker, calling it “hefty work.”196 He trundled boxes of parts from the receiving area to fuse-filling workshops, or “assembly sheds” as Peter calls them.197 He remembers hauling trucks full of boxes along long corridors.
When Peter wasn’t trucking around the plant, he helped fill fuses. He doesn’t remember the women being young, like depicted in the Miss War Worker Contest. As a healthy seventeen-year-old, he definitely would have had potential young female friends on his mind.
By 1944, GECO had introduced assembly line production.198 Peter recalled working at a long table with a small trough in front of him. “Each component was in a special box,” he says.199 “The person at the front took a wooden box the size of a brick with a hole cut to hold a fuse and pushed it along the trough to the next person, who put in the first part and passed it to the next. The explosive parts were in special boxes allowing only one to be removed at a time.”200 He remembers the slight odour emitted by the fuses and explosive powders. He also remembers how these powders reacted with hair products that women used. “If the caps they wore allowed a few locks to show, they turned (the hair) orange. You recognized GECO employees anywhere in Toronto.”201
Peter enjoyed his time at GECO. He found the lack of loud noise from heavy machinery pleasant, and the work was undemanding. Everyone chatted on the assembly lines. He enjoyed working with people from other countries, his first real exposure to the international community. “Four of my new friends were from British Guyana. One was Chinese, one English, one black and one East Indian.”202
Peter worked at GECO during the summer of 1944, and then continued to work there on weekends during the school year. In April 1945 he enlisted and trained with the Sixth Division to fight against Japan. “It all ended with the sudden capitulation after the first atomic bomb,” he says.203
Positively Electrifying: Hartley “Tony” French
Hartley French, a university student, joined GECO’s construction team in May 1941 as an electrician’s apprentice. He spent his summer helping lay GECO’s electrical foundation, primarily housed underground in the rapidly evolving tunnel system. He recalls the summer of 1941 was very hot and he relished the time he spent in the emerging cool underground tunnel system.
Hartley worked six days every week and some Sundays as well. Although he cannot remember how much his wages were, he recalled they were very good — good enough that he had no student debt that fall. He received time and a half for Sundays and double time for holiday work. He was one of about twenty apprentices to work at GECO during its construction, and the only university student. Other apprentices originated from Danforth Technical School, a local vocational school that offered trade training.
Hartley lived near Yonge Street in Toronto, between Lawrence Avenue and York Mills Road. When he started at GECO he took the Yonge streetcar south to Danforth Avenue, where he picked up a streetcar heading eastbound. He then transferred to a GECO bus, most likely at Dawes Road, to the plant. As the spring and summer progressed, he shared a ride with a mentor as far as Danforth Avenue.
Hartley headed back to school in September, earned his degree, and went on to have a successful career. He married his love, Irene, and raised a family. Today, at ninety-three, Hartley and Irene enjoy life in Don Mills, Ontario.
Without a Name
The Fusilier shared poignant stories of GECOites, sometimes failing to mention the name of the worker. This by no means detracted from the employee’s distinctive contribution.
Man Lays Down His Life on the Home Front
A veteran of the First World War with a serious heart condition was living in Montreal when Canada called for skilled toolmakers and master artisans. The First World War had left its mark on the now elderly gentle
man, but he stepped out of retirement to help out. Bob and Phil Hamilton needed him to train three bright young men in toolmaking, especially in creating intricate gauges. His doctor warned him the work might kill him. However, this extraordinary fellow felt the risk of defeat by Hitler was greater and more dangerous than the risk to his health. He would rather die than see Canada fall to the Germans. To stay alive, this dedicated man saw his doctor every night for an injection. When the doctor reprimanded him, he replied: “Doc, it’s up to you. You simply must keep my old heart going until these boys are ready to carry on.”204 His physician did his very best, and so did the man. He trained the engineers well — they were pall-bearers at his funeral a short time later.205
With Our Deepest Gratitude
While large families were more common during the 1940s, having seven siblings go off to war was not. Bill, Norman, Phil, Angus, Jack, Sandy, and Murray headed overseas, despite, or perhaps in spite of, hearing their dad’s war stories from the Great War. Bill, the oldest at thirty-two, volunteered and shipped out even before a uniform was ready for him. Bill, Phil, Jack, and Sandy fought the terrible battle at Dieppe; Bill and Phil never made it off the beach. Jack and Sandy were captured and became prisoners of war.
Their dear sister, grieving her brothers’ deaths, tried to join the women’s army, but with her husband also fighting overseas, she had to consider the well-being of her two babies. She joined GECO instead, to wage her own kind of war, ensuring her husband and surviving brothers, and other women’s brothers had all the ammunition they needed to get the job done.206
Bomb Girls Page 13
