Bomb Girls

by Barbara Dickson

  Food Services: Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy

  When Bob Hamilton brought Mrs. Ignatieff onboard to take care of Scarboro’s dietary needs, he gave her full autonomy except for one important stipulation: the cafeteria was to run on a non-profit basis.54 She was to keep prices down, regardless of inflation, and base every nutritional decision on quality, quantity, and service.55

  Florence oversaw all operations of the massive lunchroom that sprawled across three-quarters of an acre — one of the largest of its kind in Canada with a seating capacity of two thousand — and directed a staff of 120 workers, including chefs, dishwashers, servers, and cleaning personnel.56 In fact, GECO staff served more “customers” daily than all the big hotels in downtown Toronto combined.57 During rush-hour periods, cafeteria staff handled nearly forty customers every sixty seconds.58 Their cutting-edge dishwashing equipment — another GECO invention — met stringent bacterial counts imposed by the Medical Department, and satisfactorily washed away stubborn egg and lipstick from glassware.59 Dishwashing staff daily washed and sterilized about 18,000 plates, 5,000 glasses, and a seemingly unending stream of cutlery.60

  In a review of GECO’s operation in 1943, cafeteria manager Florence Ignatieff wrote, “The dining-room was planned and built to enable the employees to secure attractive, nutritious, well-balanced meals, and was arranged large and airy to provide relaxation and pleasant surroundings.”61 A visionary in the science of nutrition, and decades before the “100-Mile Diet” would gain popularity, Florence was convinced local was better, and instructed her staff to buy produce from neighbouring farms whenever possible. Fresh fruit and vegetables harvested from nearby farms at night were on the cafeteria menu the next day. Often ears of corn had been plucked from the fields only a few hours earlier.62 Educated extensively in nutritional sciences, Florence served wholesome meals and espoused healthy eating habits.63 In 1944 she offered diet and nutrition lectures to GECO employees.64 Philip Hamilton, P.D.P. Hamilton’s son, remembers Florence as “a wonderful person” who prepared “wonderful meals.”65

  In one day, hungry GECOites consumed up to 1,500 pounds of beef.66 In a typical month, cafeteria staff bought, cut up, prepared, and served twelve tons of meat.67 However, a meat shortage in September 1942 meant a few meatless days in the cafeteria.68 In an amusing GECO cafeteria story, staff mistook salt for sugar while baking a large batch of blueberry pies.69 The staff did not discover the mistake until eight hundred pieces had been cut.70 To complicate things, only half of the slices were salty.71 With only one sure way to ferret out the offending slices, Florence and her assistant Barbara Holmes taste-tested eight hundred pieces of pie.72 It would be a long time before they wanted to eat blueberry pie again.

  Florence and her staff believed the large, comfortable cafeteria contributed in good measure to GECO employees’ high morale.73 From the president to the lowliest position at the plant, everyone gathered in the spacious canteen to eat a hearty meal and meet and mingle in informal surroundings. Frequently the large room also functioned as an auditorium and hall, bringing thousands together to hold Victory Bond drives, musical events, talent nights, judging for Miss Scarboro War Worker competitions, and other plant events.

  Uniforms: The Mechanical Laundry Mangle

  GECO offered free laundering services to employees, mainly to ensure that no explosive dust lingering on dirty uniforms left the property, posing a hazard not only to workers but to their families and the general public.74 Early on, staff sent the plant’s laundry out for cleaning commercially.75 However, transporting dirty uniforms contaminated with explosive dust posed a threat to civilians.76 Opening laundering facilities onsite eliminated a hazard to the public and saved the government $2,000 per week, or more than $100,000 per annum.77 Fortuitously, there were other benefits to washing linens at the plant. Original GECO uniforms, expected to last about eight months, were still in “active service” after more than a year of wash and wear; a conservation initiative decades before a “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” would become a global mantra.78

  Laundry facilities were housed in Building No. 9, one of the “cleanest” buildings on the dirty side of the plant.79 Laundry staff were in charge of cleaning all linens used in the plant, from shop, cafeteria, and medical uniforms, to towels and hospital bedsheets.80 Staff handled between 65,000 and 75,000 pieces of laundry per week,81 more than Toronto General Hospital at that time.82 Soiled laundry arrived by “trucks” from around the plant, and were sorted, then washed in industrial-strength washers for about an hour.83 This wash included a rinse in a mild solution of sodium sulphite, then a mild bleach to remove dirt, germs, and “tet” — tetryl dust.84 The washing process took seven changes of water.85 Laundry workers put wet clothes through “extractors” — early versions of the modern dryer — to spin out excess water.86 They then pressed clean, dry laundry at the rate of one thousand items per hour in the “mechanical mangle,” a gigantic “ironing” machine.87 Mending happened where needed, and then staff sorted and redistributed clean linens to their appropriate departments.88 Slacks bearing a worker’s employee number were matched to her numbered jacket, a clean turban was added, and then her complete uniform was bundled, tagged, and sent back to the change house, all done within an eight-hour shift.89 By July 31, 1945, GECO’s laundry facilities had handled 10,171,989 pieces of clothing.90

  Transportation: Where the Rubber Hits the Road

  With the closest streetcar stop located four miles from the plant, the Hamiltons recognized the need to provide sufficient (and free) transportation for their employees.91 Management hired Danforth Bus Lines Limited and Hollinger Bus Lines Limited to pick up and drop off workers at designated stops in Toronto.92 A gentleman’s agreement was the only contract between GECO and the bus lines for almost two and a half years until they signed a formal contract in September 1943.93 Bus stops were situated at the corners of Danforth Avenue and Coxwell Avenue, Danforth and Dawes Road, Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue, Victoria Park Avenue and Kingston Road, and at Main and Gerrard Streets; there were seven stops in total.94 Buses ran from 6:00 a.m. to midnight six days a week, with an additional bus at 3:00 a.m.95 Up to twenty-six buses were needed each shift.96 Seven additional buses served office staff.97 As the war progressed and part-time work was introduced, ten more buses were brought online between 11:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. daily.98

  In a typical twelve-month period, not counting holidays or Sundays, GECO’s fleet of employee buses transported about 2.7 million passengers — the equivalent of carrying a quarter of Canada’s population — about 600,000 total miles, or approximately twenty-four times around the world.99 By 1944, with additional routes added, GECO buses had made seventy-eight thousand trips, or travelled 780,000 miles, the equivalent of circling the Earth thirty times.100

  About one thousand operators lived outside GECO bus service routes.101 Management solved this problem with carpooling. Privately owned cars — about 240 vehicles — that were registered with the War Identification Transit Plan picked up and dropped off those employees who truly lived in the wilds of Scarboro.102

  During GECO’s “rush hours” more than fifty people per minute boarded buses to head home or disembarked before starting their shifts.103 Mr. Earl Freeland, who was responsible for all bus services, worked tirelessly to keep vehicles on schedule and in good repair.104 He had no control over Mother Nature, however, when a wicked thunderstorm, a sleet or snowstorm, or frigid temperatures tested the mettle of employees and bus drivers alike. Managing this volume of human beings in a tight space could leave tempers and patience in short supply. Transporting thousands of employees each day sometimes caused anger and frustration for non-war workers along the bus route. In a letter to the editor of the Toronto Daily Star on Saturday, February 14, 1942, one such gentleman — a war worker at Research Enterprises Ltd. near Laird and Eglinton, which at its zenith employed more than 7,500 employees — had this to say in reaction to a previous editorial from “East Ender”:

  Sir: I read w
ith disgust the letter by an east ender. I thought that we had more war conscious people in the east end. I am an employee of Research Enterprises Ltd. I know, as do a great many others, the conditions on the Pape Ave. bus line.

  We, too, have seen six and sometimes eight buses one after another coming down Pape Ave. But East Ender does not say that each one is crammed to the doors with people who work in war plants. East Ender does not say that the war workers have to line up to Danforth Ave. to get on these buses. There are usually hundreds late every morning because they cannot get on the buses, they are so crowded.

  AN R.E.L. MAN105

  While “R.E.L. MAN” doesn’t say if Research Enterprises Ltd. had their own set of dedicated buses, he makes it clear that war workers — who are striving to end the war — should, and do, get preferential treatment. GECO management reminded their employees that there were other wartime plants that “would give their eye teeth” to have a free ride to work.106

  Material rationing and shortages, of car parts, rubber, manpower, and gas easily exacerbated an already complicated endeavour subject to scheduling headaches in the best of times, let alone when the nation was at war; somehow, however, GECO’s fleet of thirty-five buses diligently stayed on the roads “come hell or high water” and made 245 trips daily.107

  GECO buses, over the life of the plant, transported between 190,000 and 225,000 riders per month.108 Although the service was free to its employees, GECO’s average cost per passenger per month to run the service was 10.53 cents, a total of approximately $24,000.109 At the end of July 1945, when GECO closed its doors, the buses had carried more than 8.5 million passengers to or from the plant at a phenomenal cost of approximately $895,000.110

  11

  Rolling Up Their Sleeves: Departments Contributing to Munitions Production

  The construction, design, and operation of a wartime munitions plant took the efforts of thousands of men and women over dozens of departments dedicated, directly or indirectly, to the production of GECO’s lethal product line. Management established departments to oversee every aspect of production, ensuring the safety of personnel and property, researching and developing new and improved ways to fill munitions, and supporting the myriad needs of women, who represented the vast majority of their employees.

  Production Department: The Buck Stops Here

  The Production Department — the heart of GECO’s operation — was responsible for training every clean-side operator, supervisor, and assistant foreman.1 Proper training was critical not only to GECO’s success, but could mean the difference between life and death. Staff managed employee work record cards that contained worker histories, including information pertaining to raises, transfers, and warnings, as well as evaluation statistics for desirable occupational traits such as efficiency, proper deportment, and attendance.2 Meticulous production reporting was crucial to anticipate future munitions-filling schedules.3 The department also addressed any technical production issues that arose.4

  Planning and Records: A Juggling Act

  Expecting everything to run smoothly in an industry without a precedent in Canada was unrealistic. A new enterprise such as GECO was dependent on supplies from numerous other factories that also were charting unmapped wartime waters. One of the assembly and filling plant’s greatest hurdles to overcome lay in the dependable supply of components. Often production for filling one fuse would ramp up, only to have work suddenly stop and operators switched to other natures.5 This occurred in large part because supplies had not arrived in time.6 These stoppages, while disruptive to the operators in the fuse-filling workshops, and detrimental to the efficiency of production, were all part of the bigger problem of supply. To overcome unreliable component supplies, GECO filled on its own schedule, not based on what production was authorized to fill.7 For example, GECO was authorized to fill four million Primer 15 Mark IIs, but filled over eight million.8 There were no idle hands at GECO. If the parts needed to fill one type of fuse had not arrived, they filled and stockpiled other munitions.

  Planning and Records (P&R) provided weekly inventory and requirement sheets to management and supervisors to help anticipate daily, weekly, and monthly component requirements.9 They also managed the Inspection General — a dedicated independent group of people who worked for the Canadian government and were responsible for inspecting fuses, ensuring Canada’s armed forces used top-notch ammunition in theatres of war.10

  Just Where Do You Test Explosives?

  The only real way to test a fuse’s capability and reliability was to use it in as close to actual battlefield conditions as possible — in Scarboro’s case, at a proofing range. Of course, proofing ranges had to be located where there was no danger to life or property.11 When war broke out, Valcartier, Quebec was home to the only proof range in Canada.12 Valcartier’s proof range strained under the increased demands for testing as D.I.L. in Pickering and GECO in Scarboro ramped up production.13 A second proof range was set up near Hamilton, Ontario, to ease the backlog.14 The Hamilton site, under the direction of retired British artillery officer Colonel Douglas Clapham, was regarded as “one of the most efficient in the British Empire … and the largest establishment of its kind in Canada.”15 D.I.L. at Pickering eventually set up a range, too, which GECO used extensively.16

  In addition to testing munitions in a war-like environment, ammo was also tested on a smaller scale at GECO in its proof yard. There were two proof yards within GECO’s confines. Current arsenal practice required keeping separate, unbiased proof yards for both inspectors with the Inspection Board (I.B.) and contractors like GECO.17 In an initiative to calm ruffled feathers between the I.B. and GECO workers, the Canadian government allowed GECO to merge its two yards, jointly operated between the two parties.18 The Proof Yard’s mandate was to test, or “proof,” small samples of filled fuses randomly selected from each lot to determine how well they performed under controlled conditions and then “sentence” — accept or reject — the lot.19 Proof Yard staff were also responsible for testing samples by gunfire or “gun proof;” they tested empties to ensure their safety and capacity to be filled satisfactorily; they experimented with new methods and components; and they tested safety devices for use in filling workshops.20

  Speed of proofing was essential — if units failed, shops had to find not only the cause of the rejection, but a quick, safe solution.21 In GECO’s unique “proofing” situation all proofing was done to the satisfaction of the I.B., who reserved the right to carry out their own proofing at any time.22 At GECO’s peak of production, proof yard personnel proofed forty-two thousand units in one month, equating to about 1,750 explosions daily.23

  Workers in the Destroying Ground, situated at the southernmost end of the plant, ensured that munitions waste and/or rejected explosives, such as gunpowder, gun-cotton, TNT, tetryl, tracer compounds, caps, detonators, and filled stores were destroyed safely.24

  An Explosive Conflict

  The conflict between independent inspection personnel and the production team, including workshop supervisors and operators, was, at times, volatile. This was not a problem unique to Scarboro, but one suffered by other wartime manufacturing plants.25 With wartime industry burgeoning in Canada, up to one thousand Inspection Board (I.B.) examiners with little training, and that training based on British requirements, had absolute authority to sentence the quality of work by skilled munitions operators working in Canada.26 GECO employees, for their own safety, were well-versed in working with high explosives and recognized the vital need to get filled munitions quickly to the Allied troops — fuses’ ultimate end users. Within filling shops, work approved by government inspector (G.I.) staff was inconsistent and unreliable. Filled fuses accepted by G.I.s on one shift were rejected on the next, or the quality of work previously rejected suddenly passed inspection.27 Distrust grew between the operators and G.I.s.28 There were glaringly obvious inconsistencies in standards and undependable product quality assurance. This was no small problem given they were deal
ing with high explosives. GECO offered training classes to Inspection Board personnel, but they declined, perhaps as a matter of principle to maintain an arms-length relationship.29 This exasperated GECO’s employees. In addition, the Inspection Board would not approve changes to filling conditions that had absolutely no impact on the quality of the filled fuse.30 Worse, when they did refuse the changes, they were unable to provide any adequate technical solution to the original problem that triggered the request for a deviation.31 And the final straw? Any changes that GECO convinced the I.B. to accept had to go through official channels in Ottawa, then, in turn, back to England for final approval.32 This was “red tape” at its finest, causing delays neither GECO nor the Allied forces could afford.

  With no relief in sight, a New Year on the horizon, and a long war before them, the Hamilton brothers, in December 1941, engineered a unique proposal to mend the ongoing and sometimes hostile relationship between G.I.s and GECO employees. Put simply, Bob and Phil Hamilton obtained approval from the Inspection Board of the United Kingdom and Canada to take over responsibility for all fuse proofing and sentencing.33

  On February 15, 1942, GECO established a Factory Inspection (F.I.) Department to act as liaison between Government Inspection and GECO Production.34 The F.I. Department set up checkpoints directly on filling lines to catch potential problems as they happened, to examine empties in order to reduce their rejection, and to negotiate standards agreeable to all parties.35 The department would also oversee inspections in which the Inspection Board delegated responsibility to GECO personnel, or where GECO desired an inspection that was not required by the Inspection Board, to assure quality of product and economy of scale.36 The new department was staffed with a handful of GECO personnel, but more importantly, a considerable proportion of government inspectors moved into the department.37 Enmity and mistrust between G.I.s and GECO workers did not disappear instantaneously. Absolute diplomacy of F.I. staff was needed when interacting with the I.B. Although G.I.s were not paid by GECO, everyone, from that point forward, viewed G.I.s as GECO employees and welcomed them into the GECO family.