Preface

On September 10, 1939, Canada was thrust into a growing global conflict a mere two decades after the armistice had been signed for the “War to End All Wars.” The First World War had left a legacy of human suffering and destruction that the free world hoped never would happen again. No nation, it had been decided, would be allowed to arm aggressively for any significant conflict. Tragically, promises were not kept, a failure that ultimately would cost a staggering loss of life — some estimates attribute the loss of fifty-five million souls to the Second World War, with more than eighty-one thousand Canadian casualties.1 The greatest man-made conflict in human history would be fought — in the air, upon every sea, and on every continent except Antarctica.

On that fateful day in September 1939, Canadians knew that if they had any hope of beating Hitler and his belligerent bullies, the Allied forces would not only need every able-bodied man Canada could muster to fight, but a steady stream of ammunition as well.

Before Canada entered what was to become the Second World War, the only facility in Canada that produced ammunition was the Dominion Arsenal in Quebec City.2 Opened in 1882, the plant turned out about 750,000 rounds a month of one type of ammunition.3 The number sounded impressive for its time.

Hitler’s relentless drive to rule the world forced Great Britain and her Commonwealth partners to ramp up production quickly. By November 1942, Canada had produced more explosives in six months than during the entire First World War.4 Filled ammunition, from bombs and depth charges to rifle cartridges and heavy shells, left filling and assembly plants at the rate of millions of rounds a month.5 By 1943, at its peak of munitions production, Canada produced more small-arms ammunition in one eight-hour shift than its peacetime facilities could have produced in two months.6 In fact, munitions output reached an ultimate rate of nearly 1.5 billion rounds a year, with over thirty thousand workers employed in factories engaged in producing small-arms ammunition.7

Making this achievement even more impressive, the production of small-arms munitions was extremely complex. Even with far superior equipment and production methods than those used during the First World War, the assembly of a complete round required up to one hundred different operations.8

C.D. Howe, minister of Munitions and Supply during the Second World War, wrote in the foreword of The History of the Department of Munitions and Supply: Canada in the Second World War:

Before the war, few thought of Canada as an industrial power and many doubted whether the manufacturing techniques, which had been perfected in other countries over the centuries, could be developed here in time to produce the war supplies required. It was a challenge that was splendidly met by the men and women of Canada.

In the pages that follow will be found the record of one of the more important eras of Canadian history, the years during which the country emerged from its position as a producer of basic supplies to that of a highly industrialized state.

The instrument knitting together this vast web of enterprise was the Department of Munitions and Supply where men and women, numbering several thousand, laboured to meet the unprecedented demands of the greatest war in history. As a result of their work, the apparently insoluble problems of the early days were gradually resolved into a great orderly plan uniting the various phases of a wartime economy.9

The “key” to the attack, to ultimate victory, lay within vital complex military hardware. Fuses are devices used to arm and detonate explosive military munitions such as missiles, land mines, torpedoes, bombs, and explosive shells.10 Made up of between twenty and fifty different parts, they are filled with explosive ingredients that explode quickly when exposed to a small spark.11 The fuse, once detonated, lit a much larger projectile, causing it to explode, either upon impact, or at a certain time during flight.12

Fuses, the small but mighty heroes of war, are key to the flawless operation of a shell or bomb. However, unless the fuse is filled with combustible powder, it is as useful as a lampstand. “All the refinements of modern gunnery and highly developed methods of ranging and controlling fire power would be of no avail,” W.H. Pitcher wrote in an article for Canadian Chemistry and Process Industries, “if the fuse failed at the crucial moment.”13

The importance of reliable and efficient ammunition cannot be argued. Behind every man behind a gun in the Second World War stood a dedicated group of Canadians steadfast in their determination to ensure every fuse that passed through the combatant’s hands reflected outstanding workmanship. From the transportation of raw materials to the manufacture of the ammunition, from filling the munitions with explosives to its transport to the theatre of war, brave men and women contributed directly to ensuring that ammunition found its proper place within a gun or war machine aboard a ship, tank, or plane. Courageous, trained fighting men willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom used those carefully designed fuses to trigger targeted massive explosions, stopping the enemy where he stood.

Lieutenant-Colonel H. Read, R.A., a British authority on ammunition, stated, “The whole national war effort is really nothing more or less than arranging for the contact between our ammunition and the enemy. If at the very climax there is a failure, all has been wasted.”14 Continuing, he says:

Think on the hunting and sinking of the Bismarck. Here the far-flung operation of sea power resulted in one vital bit of damage to her steering gear by a fleet (of Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers.) This enabled the great ship to be caught and destroyed at leisure. But supposing the fuse of that aerial torpedo had failed, there was no opportunity to repeat the blow and the Bismarck would have escaped to prey with disastrous results on our Atlantic shipping. It is not too much to say that millions of tons of shipping depended on the correct functioning of one single fuse.15

W.H. Pitcher agreed. “The German battleship “Bismark” [sic] might still be afloat to harass Allied shipping if the fuse on the torpedo which first crippled her had failed in its action.”16

Recognizing the vital necessity of supplying Canadian and other Allied forces with fuses and ammunition during the war, the Canadian government established Project No. 24 of Allied War Supplies Corporation (A.W.S.C.), a factory that would specialize in filling munitions, in 1940.17 Bomb Girls tells the story of more than twenty-one thousand dedicated men and women who filled more than a quarter of a billion fuses for the Allied forces. Initially hired to build other wartime factories, General Engineering Company (Canada) Limited was given the responsibility of designing and building the shell-filling plant as well as selecting, training, and organizing its staff and overseeing its operation. Project No. 24 would come to be known simply as GECO, or “Scarboro.”18

GECO’s story is unique from its wartime counterparts in several ways. GECO was the only wartime plant in Canada dedicated to filling fuses, primers, tubes, and tracers.19 When the war ended, the plant had filled more than 256 million units, providing the catalysts behind the greatest quantity of heavy ammunition manufactured in Canada from 1940 to 1945.20 “Scarboro” became the largest fuse-filling plant in Canada’s history. Incredibly, less than four months after the turning of the first piece of sod in February 1941, the first filling workshop was completed.21 The plant went into volume production in July 1941.22 By September 1941, construction workers had erected more than 170 buildings on 346 acres of gently rolling farmland in Scarboro.23

Aerial view of GECO looking southeast from present-day Civic Road. Courtesy of Archives of Ontario.

Almost 99 percent of all production submitted to government inspection was approved and accepted into service — an extraordinary feat achieved by seamless teamwork.24 Imbued with the resolve to reach maximum production without sacrificing quality, workers etched every filled fuse that left Scarboro with “Sc/C” (Scarboro/Canada) as a mark of quality. It was one recognized not only by fellow Canadians but also by Allied and enemy forces from around the world.25

Remarkably, GECO would suffer no fatal accidents, despite thousands of employees — predominately women — handling high explosives and gunpowder twenty-four hours a day, six days a week, for four years.26 This accomplishment was truly rare in global arsenal practice. While there were no catastrophic disasters within the munitions industry during the Second World War in Canada, there were deaths, maimings, and other injuries recorded, with several deaths recorded at GECO’s sister plant, managed by D.I.L. in Pickering, Ontario.27 And finally, production was never interrupted by a single serious labour dispute.28

The world made its peace with Germany decades ago and the need for a munitions plant has long since passed, but GECO’s legacy lives on, in its last surviving buildings and tunnels, buried under the city as an invisible reminder of a nation that went to war. GECO lives on, too, in the memories of those who worked at the plant, in the hearts and minds of children who remember their mom or dad faithfully serving their country doing war work, and in the memories of thousands of children who lived with their families in emergency housing set up at GECO after the war.

For reasons of national security, much of “Scarboro’s” story was shrouded in secrecy during the war, and any discussion as to its existence was off-limits outside the plant. In fact, after the war ended, the government ordered Robert McLean Prior (R.M.P.) Hamilton, GECO’s president, and Philip Dawson Prior (P.D.P.) Hamilton, his older brother and GECO’s vice-president, to burn all specifications for Project No. 24. In a letter from the Inspection Board of United Kingdom and Canada, the controller general wrote, “All drawings and specifications should be destroyed by General Engineering … and a list of those destroyed should be forwarded … and should certify on the list that all drawings and specifications shown have been destroyed…”29 From Air Raid Precaution Regulations to War Savings Certificates, all documentation was burned. All purchasing records for items from abrasives to linoleum, from sanitary pads to guard whistles, were destroyed.

The only proof GECO existed now lies in workers’ personal keepsakes, and in the records saved by the Hamilton brothers. Both men felt it imperative that the “records of the design, construction, and operating of an ammunition ‘Loading’ plant should be kept available for future emergencies.”30 In fact, they recommended the Canadian government keep a contingent of expert ammunition personnel, provide munitions training to future “vocational” army reserves that could become and train munitions operators quickly, and, more ominously, maintain personnel who would work closely with Britain and Canada’s allies “for the next war.”31 Hamilton’s GECO records remained in his private possession until 1980, when he presented them to the Engineering Heritage Records Foundation. A year later, the foundation gave the records to the Archives of Ontario. Elizabeth Hamilton — Betty — Bob’s widow, donated additional material to the Archives in 1998. Phil’s records remain with his family. R.M.P. Hamilton, in a letter to John H. Fox, Esq. in April 1981, forty years after the plant opened, stated that GECO “should be made widely known to the Ontario Public.”32

It is a privilege and honour to help Mr. Hamilton’s desire come to fruition. GECO’s enduring spirit so aptly emulates the Canadians who tirelessly worked there. GECO’s ranks — the girls behind the guns — are quickly dwindling. Unless their stories are told, how will future generations learn of their sacrifice, of their patriotism, of their resolve? This book is part of GECO’s one last song.