15

If You Build It, Scarborough Will Come

GECO’s story at Scarboro did not end with Germany’s surrender.

Decontamination and Desensitization

With GECO’s days of production numbered, Bob and Phil Hamilton had more to worry about than just wrapping up payroll and taking down posters. Management had to ensure workmen desensitized the buildings and surrounding land, ridding the compound of all toxic and explosive materials, as well as destroying all drawings, specifications, and sensitive employee data.1 Most buildings on the dirty side of the complex did not need special attention, except for change houses, where workers had carried explosive dust in on their hair, uniforms, and shoes. However, most everything on the clean side needed decontaminating, right down to scouring cracks between linoleum floor tiles and disinfecting or destroying sink traps.2

Workmen treated workshops with a special chemical formula depending on the explosive residue being removed. Water was sufficient for ridding a site of gunpowder, while workers needed a solution of sodium sulphite, water, and acetone to remove tetryl.3 Some buildings were razed; their lumber burned.4 Contaminated rock wool, as well as tainted earth and bricks from the Destroying Ground, Proof Yard, and magazines were transported to the “Don Valley Pit” and submerged in nearly ninety feet of water.5 More than 6,800 pounds of various excess explosives were destroyed by burning in the proofing yard.6

The War Assets Department of the Canadian government took over managing GECO’s buildings and re-zoned the area for light industry.7

Sheltering the Homeless

At the north end of the GECO plant, bordering Eglinton and Warden Avenues, several buildings were acquired by W.H. Bosely, emergency shelter administrator for Greater Toronto from the War Assets Corporation.8 In many ways, providing emergency housing in the now abandoned buildings of the Scarboro munitions plant made sense. Besides the influx of returning G.I.’s, many families, due to circumstances, some beyond their control, were suddenly without a place to live, or needed to find an affordable place until the economy picked up. In an article in the Toronto Telegram, a writer reported, “With the number of evictions increasing, the housing plight in Toronto is reaching a new crisis ...”9 With other emergency housing facilities cropping up, the city refitted GECO’s facility to accommodate some of the neediest. GECOite Helen Leslie and her fine family were the first residents to move into the new housing project, taking up residence in GECO’s administration building on July 15, 1946.10

“When the housing shortage became almost disastrous after the war’s end,” reporter Harvey Currell wrote, in an article in The Telegram, “Toronto leased some [GECO] buildings, threw up flimsy partitions, put in plumbing and rented apartments to city families who could find no other place to live.”11

Helen told a newspaper reporter the day they moved in, “We will be rather cramped in our four-room apartment but it is such a relief to know that we will be all together, under one roof until better housing accommodation comes along.”12

Living at GECO combined the pleasure of living out in the countryside with the convenience of the city within reach by bus. It was the best of both worlds. In the morning, a resident could go apple picking, or swim in a nearby creek; the afternoon could be spent in the city enjoying a movie and shopping along the Danforth followed by an evening sweet-smelling hayride offered by a local farmer.

GECO became a close-knit community brought together through their unique living arrangement. In many respects, it operated much like a beloved campground nestled away amongst the “wilds” of Scarboro, where neighbours knew one another, looked out for one another, brushed their teeth and showered in communal washrooms, and knew everyone’s business. Many moms and their small children rarely left the grounds, especially when the family couldn’t afford an automobile. Mothers would sit on wooden benches placed along concrete sidewalks to keep an eye on their children as they played. An apple orchard sat at the northeast corner of the property. Children would run across Eglinton Avenue to pick mushrooms where GECO employees had once planted their Victory Gardens. Hundreds of children could be seen running around the compound on any given Saturday. The thrill of (mis)adventure living in Scarboro’s farming “playground” only added to GECO’s exclusivity.

In addition to enjoying the bounty of nearby farms, GECO residents appreciated some original wartime amenities such as a baseball diamond and a hockey rink. Lawn bowling was available at the corner of Civic Drive and Warden Avenue before the municipality installed a new water tower.

Residents of the GECO housing complex, arguably a unique community within Scarboro Township, had to consider daily life, from performing ablutions to doing laundry, from grocery shopping to keeping children entertained and out of trouble.

Helen Leslie did her laundry in her apartment, using, as her daughter Jackie recalled, an “old clunker” washing machine. She hung out their clothes to dry, year round, on a line rigged up by her husband, Howard, accessed via their second-storey bedroom window. Each building had its own laundry mat complete with washing machines, large tubs, and indoor clotheslines.

Men and women shared separate but communal washrooms situated in the middle of each building and consisting of three toilets, showers, and sinks. Each sex was responsible for keeping their respective amenities clean. If the men didn’t bother, the facilities were neglected. The women’s bathrooms were better cared for.

Grocery shopping proved a challenge. Women had limited options. They could travel into the city, which took time and was a great inconvenience if they had no vehicle; they could seek out meat and produce in season from neighbouring farms with no guarantee as to selection; or they could walk to the nearest store, which was located at Eglinton Avenue and Kennedy Road. It wasn’t long before residents and business owners recognized the need for a store onsite.

A store was opened shortly after people moved in. Remarkably, a blind man ran the shop. When a young customer entered his store, they picked out their merchandise and put their payment in a dish. The children couldn’t figure out how the sightless man knew exactly what they had purchased; he would feel the coins with his fingers to ensure he was paid accurately.

Another shop was set up in an old silver-coloured bus, which housed a fruit and veggie stand. It would be six years before the first big grocery outlet, a Dominion store, would open as part of the new Golden Mile.

The forty-five-minute trip to and from the city was too great a distance for young children to travel, so Building No. 86 — GECO’s former medical building — was renovated, and a school opened. At its peak, the housing complex had four school buildings — three public and one Catholic — all run by accredited, competent teaching staff. Classrooms could accommodate close to forty students. Kindergarten classrooms were attached to the recreation centre. Children identified the schools by colour; the “green school” housed the lower elementary grades, while the “brown school” accommodated grades four to eight.

Given GECO’s remote location, and with hundreds of children idle on Sundays, churches such as the Salvation Army set up parishes at GECO. Many children attended Sunday School. Scarboro’s city council provided the Salvation Army with a large hall rent-free on GECO’s premises in March 1952, in which they could hold their various weekly meetings.13 As of May 1954, the Salvation Army had christened almost fifty children at the housing outpost.14

The GECO housing complex operated from 1946 to 1954, with one to two thousand men, women, and children, conservatively, inhabiting more the than three hundred units.15 It has been suggested, though, that more than six thousand people — upwards of eight hundred families — lived at GECO over its postwar tenure. Toronto Telegram staff newspaper reporter Derm Dunwoody adds credence to the latter estimate. During the summer of 1950, Dunwoody wrote, “The shouts of what seems to be more children than anywhere else in the world” could be heard amid GECO’s housing units.16 He estimated 1,100 children lived at the complex.17 The first residents, Helen and Howard Leslie, added to their fine family while living at the complex, bringing their seventh child, Howard Wayne — “Harry” — into the fold on May 19, 1949.

Unfortunately, by June 1952, the Anglican Synod charged that “intolerable conditions exist[ed] at the Toronto Emergency Housing Unit at GECO.”18

The Scarboro Police Force set up a precinct on the premises of GECO and ushered in each New Year’s Eve rounding up rowdy and quarrelsome GECO men who’d toasted one too many. One year in particular, 1951, brought out more than just happy revelers. One man ended up in hospital with knife wounds, while many others suffered bloodied noses and black eyes. Scarboro police were kept on duty all night with “a continual series of near riots.”19 According to Acting Chief Wilfred McLellan, brawls were yearly events at GECO.20 The police station at GECO was staffed by one regular officer but the entire Scarboro force showed up New Year’s Eve.21 Former Baptist minister turned politician Oliver Crockford called the riot a disgrace. “They are just running wild,” he said. “Children by the hundreds are growing up there in deplorable conditions.”22

Today, surviving residents who lived there as children, vehemently disagree with the unflattering reputation their housing complex earned. They fondly recall a unique time in their young lives when, due to unfortunate circumstances caused by the fallout of a world at war, they lived in unique conditions never to be repeated in their lifetimes, perhaps never again in the history of Canada.

After the war, from 1946 to 1954, several GECO buildings were acquired by the city and refitted to provide emergency housing to needy families. Conservatively, upward of two thousand men, women, and children lived at the complex. Rent, on average, ranged between $37 and $40 per month for over three hundred, mostly tiny, four-room apartments. Washrooms were communal. Courtesy of Scarborough Historical Society.

Scarborough’s “Golden Mile” of Industry

The Canadian government’s decision not to raze GECO’s 173 buildings after the Second World War set the wheels of progress in motion. Less than five years after the war ended industry was setting up shop in and around GECO, partly due to cheap land and low taxes.23 In 1948 Reeve Crockford said, upon the township’s purchase of the GECO property, “This is our golden opportunity. Unless Scarboro steps ahead, we will not make progress.”24 Scarborough’s “Golden Mile” was well underway.25 This notable stretch of formerly quiet countryside transformed into a bustling centre of large-scale manufacturing, and represented hope and prosperity after the war. New housing sprung up to accommodate the need for residences near places of employment like Thermos and Frigidaire.26 Past GECO women who wanted to stay in the workforce made Scarborough their home to raise their families in the post Second World War housing boom. The Golden Mile even merited a visit from Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II in June 1959.27

If you build it, they will come. In a sense, GECO’s wartime presence among the gently rolling hills of southern rural Scarboro became a catalyst in a time of peace, stimulating growth and urban expansion and helping Scarborough to become the vibrant, multi-cultural city it is today.

Veil of Secrecy Lifted

More than seventy years have passed since King George expropriated farmland in Scarboro to build a top-secret munitions plant, yet remnants of GECO still stand today, a testament to the incredible workmanship of her builders. Little could the Hamilton brothers or their twenty-one thousand employees have fathomed GECO’s enduring presence in Scarborough.28 Intended to be temporary wooden sheds with an anticipated five years of useful service, twenty-one original buildings still stand today.29 A walk or drive around the area bordered by Warden and Eglinton Avenues and Sinnott and Hymus Roads will reveal, with a discerning eye, the low silhouettes of original GECO buildings, some remarkably unchanged from their former heyday. The quality of the building construction speaks to the high standards that the entire GECO endeavour strived to not only meet but also surpass. In an odd twist of fate, GECO’s buildings have survived longer than most of the men and women who once worked behind the quasi-military compound’s eight-foot-high barbed-wire fence.

Some GECO properties are easy to recognize; others take some sleuthing and keen deduction skills to find. Windows, colourful clapboard, aluminum siding, and façades have been added. These historic buildings house restaurants, car repair shops, small businesses, and are used for storage and warehousing. Some owners use the tunnels under their feet as cellars, storing inventory such as beer and car parts. While several GECO buildings are still well-maintained, others are dilapidated and dingy, armed with the latest in security deterrents. Guard dogs, barbed-wire fencing, surveillance cameras, intimidating signage, and iron gates serve to warn trespassers to enter at their own peril. Ironically, some GECO buildings are better protected today than when sabotage was a real threat.

One might argue GECO today is just an empty shell of its former self; ruins really, and a mere shadow of the glory days when it was used for round-the-clock war work. However, almost everyone who has had the unique experience of walking through GECO’s tunnels will agree that its ruins both captivate and humble, not only because of the vital job carried out at “Scarboro,” but also because of the plant’s sheer tenacity in surviving. GECO was and still is a historical treasure trove, not only in its physical ruins but also in its legacy to the future generations of Scarborough and Canada. Its extensive tunnel system remains one of Scarborough’s best-kept secrets, sparking puzzled looks on the faces of seasoned citizens at their mention.

In 1967, Reeve Albert Campbell did not think the old (GECO) buildings were worth keeping.30 He would have liked to have seen most of them torn down. In time, he suspected — and perhaps secretly wished — that even the name “GECO” would be forgotten.31

Several miles of tunnels ran beneath the GECO plant at Scarboro, connecting most of its buildings in the Danger Zone. Today, most of the tunnels have been filled in, or have been destroyed by age or neglect. However, there are still some sections of tunnel intact, used as cellars and storage, or, perhaps unknowingly, to shelter feral animals. This tunnel sat under Building No. 67 before it was demolished for commercial expansion. Courtesy of Rebeccah Beaulieu.

Today, GECO properties continue to change hands, with new owners ignorant of the rich, poignant stories that linger in the air, as they raze, renovate, or reduce to rubble what is left of GECO. What’s more, with time and progress’s unrelenting drive for new and more, owners are sealing up and filling in the old maze of tunnels, a treasured artifact literally beneath their feet. It seems that Reeve Campbell, posthumously, might just get his wish.

What does the future hold for GECO? Oddly, the same relentless drive for change and progress for which the old war plant was a catalyst, will erase this munitions plant from history, as aging citizens of Scarborough, the generation touched by a world war, eventually pass away.

Is GECO worth saving? Perhaps Reeve Campbell was right — wipe the blight from the city’s landscape. Pave the way for new growth and development, for revitalization. But then we are left with a troubling prick of conscience: how do we honour the memory of countless men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice, paid with their lives so that the city of Scarborough and the country of Canada could live in freedom? Who will pay tribute to the dedication and the toil of the countless on the home front, supporting not only fellow Canadians in the theatres of war, but the Allied forces around the world?

In September 2014, the City of Toronto, through its Underpass Revitalization Program, sponsored the creation of a mural to honour the women of GECO. The mural is located on St. Clair Avenue East, just east of Warden Avenue in Scarborough, within walking distance of the wartime plant. Courtesy of Lawrence Hicks.

In September 2014 the City of Toronto commissioned urban muralist Mitchell Lanecki to capture the essence of GECO, creating a fitting tribute to the women of the plant and their magnificent contribution to the Allied war effort.

It will take a nation to teach each man, woman, and child the terrible human toll that war brings. Every child who lives today, as well as every child to come, must not only learn about the colossal human struggle their brave Canadian forebearers undertook on their behalf — both abroad and at home — but they must also pause to remember.

Lest we forget.

GECO arranged group workshop photographs as a memento of their employees’ time at the plant after the war ended. Because the Canadian government wrapped up operations quickly, the first round of layoffs took place only three weeks after Germany surrendered. Many shops did not get the opportunity to have their picture taken. In this historic picture, happy smiles tell the story: peace has returned to Canada. Grandmother to June Button and Ivy Faubel, GECOite Ivy Harris is sitting in the front row, far left. Courtesy of June Button.

Long Live Scarboro!

It is fitting to salute the critical work carried out by General Engineering Company (Canada) Limited during the Second World War, using their own words to capture their patriotism, perseverance, and passion for Scarboro’s Bomb Girls:

Now we can turn back to thoughts and plans for ultimate peace. Those of us who will continue to work can help make or do things that are constructive rather than destructive — things that make for people’s comfort and happiness. There is a staggering amount of constructive work to be done both in a material and spiritual sense. Perhaps if all of us who formed Scarboro’s proud company take with us into our new spheres of endeavor the same spirit of loyalty, the same determination to safeguard the things we worked so hard for in the Plant and the same benevolence toward one another — Scarboro will never die. The tradition, outgrowth of the tragedy of war, will live on, a vibrant, shining thing through the happier years of peace to come.

Long live Scarboro!32