Bomb Girls

by Barbara Dickson

  GECO hired Dorothy Cheesman at only sixteen years of age to type up top-secret engineering notes when construction for the munitions factory was just getting underway. GECO staff entrusted Dorothy to lock their safe each evening with classified engineering notes safely tucked inside. Dorothy, a steadfast employee, stayed with GECO until the end of the war. Courtesy of Dorothy McRae.

  Too Young to Fill: Elizabeth Ellis

  Elizabeth Ellis was born on May 23, 1927, in her grandmother’s home on Broadview Avenue at Pottery Road in Toronto. She was the oldest of four daughters born within four years to Harry and Isobel Ellis. The Depression hit the family hard and her dad, a bricklayer, could find little work. He turned to government relief to feed and clothe his young family during the 1930s.

  Betty grew up overlooking the gorgeous Don River, and enjoyed swimming in its clear, fresh water with friends. During the war, a German POW camp was built in the Don Valley below her house. The men lived in wooden huts, hung their laundry out on clotheslines just like their Canadian neighbours, and were picked up each morning by bus to go to work on wartime projects. The simple, down-to-earth everydayness of their routine amazed Betty. The camp was not fenced in. The prisoners did not attempt an escape. Perhaps the fate that awaited them back in Germany was a lot worse than life as a POW in the Great White North.

  Elizabeth struggled with math in high school, and after failing and being kept back, she left at the age of sixteen. Needing a job to help support her family, she discovered a wartime munitions plant’s employment office on “the Danforth.” She applied and started the commute via the Hollinger bus out to GECO in Scarboro at the end of May 1943. She remembers the bus would meander its way up Victoria Park Avenue to Eglinton Avenue. Scarboro seemed so far from where she lived on Broadview Avenue.

  Because Betty was only sixteen, she was not old enough to fill munitions.5 This restriction did not bother her. “Office work would be more what I was used to,” she said. Elizabeth performed basic office duties such as filing and typing. Within her office was a large laboratory where a handful of men worked. Windows allowed the office staff to watch the men, but they were not allowed to enter the room. She remembers feeling out of place. “I was so young,” she said. “Everyone was older, they were married, had children.”

  In fact, with the naiveté of youth, it never dawned on Betty that women were filling munitions. “I had no idea what they did in the workshops,” she said. She saw women who had yellow hair and hands from working with tetryl, but she did not know that that was the cause at the time. She was also completely unaware of GECO’s tunnel system.

  As a healthy, athletic young woman, Betty took advantage of the extra-curricular activities offered at GECO. She played first base on one of GECO’s softball teams, and still remembers going to play an exhibition game for the troops at an army camp located at Niagara-on-the-Lake. “I leapt up to catch a ball,” she said, “and fell into a hole, spraining my ankle.” A military doctor taped up her injury onsite, but she was out of the game, and missed three days of work. When she returned, she visited GECO’s Medical Department, where the nurses were aghast at the state of the army doctor’s “quick fix.” On another occasion, Betty, wanting to do her part for the men fighting overseas, attended one of GECO’s blood donor clinics. Unfortunately, the nurses discovered she was anemic and instead of taking her blood, instructed her to take iron pills and eat lots of lettuce and liver.

  By March 1945, talk of the war ending was already on the lips of hopeful Canadians. Betty knew she would soon be looking for work. She left GECO that spring to work at Queen’s Park, performing clerical duties.

  Early in 1945, Elizabeth rekindled a fledging romance with a young, handsome sailor, Victor Warner, who, while serving in the Royal Canadian Navy as part of D.E.M.S. (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships), had come home on a ten-day leave. When he shipped out, they promised to write to each other. Today, almost seven decades later, two of Victor’s dear letters can be found tucked in Betty’s wallet.

  Victor was discharged in November 1945, returning to work at Canada Wire, where he had worked before he enlisted. Elizabeth left her job at Queen’s Park and moved to Canada Wire to be closer to Victor.

  Elizabeth and Victor were married in the summer of 1948. The next morning, Victor slipped the receipt from their first breakfast as a married couple into his wallet. A treasured memento, he carried it with him until he died in his sleep in 2004.

  Victor and Elizabeth had two children. Today, Elizabeth lives in south Scarborough, near the Golden Mile.

  A Star Is Born: Helen Fraser

  By the time Helen Fraser joined GECO, she had lived most every girl’s dream. Just a few years earlier, as a single young woman, Helen Gray lived in Medicine Hat enjoying a recent Alberta Beauty Contest win. Scouts from Paramount Studios in Hollywood arrived, searching for beauty as part of a North American contest. Unbeknownst to Helen, the town’s local theatre manager gave them a picture of the attractive young lady. Not long after, she received a wire, requesting she travel to California.

  Suddenly, Helen, along with twenty-nine other starry-eyed young ladies, was a Hollywood hopeful. She signed a six-month contract with the film studio, earning $50 a week. She first appeared in Hollywood on Parade, a film starring a group of beauty contest winners who visited several Hollywood nightspots. The film featured big names, including Mae West, Gloria Swanson, Cecil B. DeMille, the Marx Brothers, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and Canada’s Mary Pickford. Helen also starred in Search for Beauty, which came out a year later, but her contract ended and Hollywood did not ask her back. “I was there six months,” she said, and while “it was lots of fun,” she returned home, humility intact. She married, and soon after, the war broke out.

  With seven brothers — all but the youngest fighting overseas, with one missing in action flying over Germany — she needed little urging to help the war effort. Even her husband was serving in the RCAF, as a flight sergeant. Helen moved east specifically to join the ranks at GECO. She was given a unique job — driving employees and special guests around the plant in a company taxi. She loved her job, but admits with a wistful smile she left a small bit of her heart in Hollywood and hoped to pursue her acting career when the war ended.

  Of the thirty young women selected in Paramount’s Search for Beauty contest, Helen’s colleague, actress Ann Sheridan, was the only one to really make it in film.6

  A Run-In with the Boss: Barbara Holmes

  Barbara Mary Jarman grew up with a love for sports. Born in August 1915 in Edmonton, Alberta, Barbara was the daughter of international rugby star John Wallace Jarman, who played for Bristol, and who immigrated to Canada around the turn of the century. Barbara had an idyllic childhood, and after completing high school, attended the University of Alberta, where she earned a bachelor of science degree.

  As a young, single woman, she moved to Toronto, hoping to find work as a dietician. She secured a job in Eaton’s iconic College Street store. A newcomer to the city, Barbara joined the Badminton and Racket Club, where she developed a life-long love for tennis. A dear friend, Ruby, played matchmaker, introducing Barbara to a handsome young man named Hartley Holmes. Hartley, a chartered accountant, lived with health issues, including diabetes, and was not able to enlist when Canada entered the Second World War. Barbara and Hartley were married in June 1940. Barbara quit her job for a brief time, but went back to work when GECO opened in Scarboro.

  Barbara remembers the plant’s buildings “were in a U-shape where women were filling shells for the war.” Along with cafeteria manager Florence Ignatieff, Barbara helped set the meal plan for the massive munitions plant. “We did a lot of cooking,” she says proudly. “We had to have fruits and desserts all ready to go. It was the cleanest place to work at that time.”

  Barbara recalls fondly a serendipitous “run-in” with GECO’s president, Bob Hamilton. Late one Saturday afternoon as Mr. Hamilton was leaving the plant, he spotted Barbara waiting for a bus. He stopped an
d offered her a ride home. To Barbara, this would have been quite extraordinary — getting a ride home from the president of the company. When Bob discovered through casual conversation that Hartley was away on business, he invited her home for dinner. Barbara balked — she couldn’t possibly impose on Mrs. Hamilton without proper invitation. Bob put her at ease when he simply replied, “Never mind, you’ll like her; besides, we’re having roast beef.” Barbara and Betty Hamilton became fast friends that Saturday evening. The spur-of-the-moment ride home and subsequent shared meal around the dinner table brought two families together who enjoyed a close life-long friendship. Barbara and her family spent many happy times at the Hamilton cottage on Bass Island. “It was the happiest part of my life,” Barbara, now ninety-seven, says. “It was a wonderful part of my life, knowing Betty and Bob Hamilton. Bob and Betty were very generous, remarkable people.”

  Barbara left GECO when she became pregnant with her daughter and namesake, Barbara, born in 1944. As testament to the close friendships Barbara built while at GECO, Grace Hyndman, GECO’s personnel director, and Florence Ignatieff became her daughter’s godmothers. Betty Hamilton became godmother to Barbara’s son, who was born two years later.

  Sadly, Hartley died from a heart attack in 1967. Barbara remarried in 1970. Her second husband, Basil Langfeldt, passed away in 1986. She smiles when she remembers them. “I was very happy with my two husbands.”

  Barbara played tennis most of her life, proud to say she played in the “over ninety” category in tennis tournaments in Florida. She now lives in Toronto in the same retirement home where her treasured friend Betty Hamilton once resided.

  Barbara Holmes Langfeldt with John McLean Parsons Hamilton, Toronto, 2013. Barbara, while at GECO, worked closely with Florence Ignatieff, the cafeteria manager. GECO’s main two-thousand-seat cafeteria served approximately three thousand meals per day, or sixty-five thousand meals per month, more than all of Toronto’s downtown hotels combined at that time. Courtesy Barbara Dickson.

  Chief Dietitian and “Guiding Genius”: Florence Ignatieff

  Florence Ignatieff, director of GECO’s massive cafeteria services, managed a staff of 120 employees. She brought an armload of impressive credentials to her new job, including an extensive academic background and successful record of managing food operations at the Georgian Room of the T. Eaton Company.

  Born in 1902, Florence Hargreaves was the youngest of five. Mika, Florence’s daughter, said, “[my mother was raised] in a fairly Victorian family that seemed to be trying to keep her doing the ‘correct’ thing, and she wasn’t going to let them stop her.”7

  As a determined young woman, Florence wanted to study science at university. Her father refused to enrol her, calling the pursuit not “lady-like enough.”8 Florence put a plan together. “She always found a way,” Mika said, “to do what she wanted to.”9 Not particularly fond of cooking, Florence discovered she could meet the undergraduate course requirements needed for biochemistry by taking a bachelor of arts in household economics, which her father liked. She then went on to earn her masters in biochemistry from the University of Toronto.

  “She had an extraordinary group of friends at university,” her son Paul says from his home in France.10 “They were a very strong group of ladies; very moral, very principled, very influential.”11

  “Her group of friends at university didn’t ask if they could or could not do something,” Mika adds, “they just went ahead and did whatever they wanted to. That pretty much sums up my mother’s approach to life.”12

  After earning her master’s degree, Florence enrolled at the University of Toronto and completed her program, but before she defended her dissertation, her professor, Dr. Wasteneys, asked her to supervise a new biochemistry Ph.D. student, Count Vladimir “Jim” Ignatieff.

  Vladimir Ignatieff was a man of renown in his own right. His father, Count Pavel Nikolayevich Ignatiev, was minister of education, as well as former governor of Kiev in Russia — at that time a part of the Russian Empire. Count Ignatiev was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks during the Great War. The count presumed he would be executed as the Romanov family had been. “However, his wife, Princess Natalya Meshcherskaya, alerted the local educational establishment,” Mika said, “who regarded Ignatiev as a positive reformer, and mounted a public demonstration, and negotiated his release.”13 Count Pavel and his family fled, first to France, then to England in 1919, and finally immigrated to Upper Melbourne, Quebec, in 1925, where Paul and Natasha built a home.

  While Jim Ignatieff acknowledged Florence as his Ph.D. supervisor, it wasn’t until he asked her to attend the annual Russian ball in Toronto — resplendent with Russian nobility such as Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, Nickolas II’s younger sister — and watched Florence walk into the room in a midnight-blue, low-cut velvet dress, that she captured his undivided attention. They were married a year later.

  Jim completed his Ph.D. and the young couple moved to Edmonton, Alberta, where he took up a teaching position at the University of Alberta in 1935. Their children, Paul and Mika, were born in 1936 and 1939 respectively. Within days of Canada entering the Second World War, Jim enlisted, wanting to fight for his adopted country. He headed overseas that September with the Calgary Highlanders in their infantry division as a chemical war specialist. At six-feet six-inches tall, he was an imposing figure in his military-issued kilt.

  With no family in Alberta, Florence moved back to Toronto early on in the war, with her little ones, to live near her brothers, sisters, and friends. While working at the Eaton store on College Street, she was approached to help plan and manage the cafeteria at a new fuse-filling plant in Scarboro.

  “We hired people who knew their job, expertise,” Bob Hamilton explained.14 “We went seeking them; we didn’t wait for them to appear on the doorstep. Through inquiry of several restaurants [we learned Florence] had run the Eaton’s food service, so she knew her job and she got good staff.”15

  The little family moved into one of six bungalows situated at the GECO site, where they lived for the duration of the war. As a working mother with long, demanding hours, Florence hired a live-in housekeeper, an older woman with whom she worked while at Eaton’s. “Lizzie” became “a second mother” to the children, Paul and Mika recall, and she stayed with the family for the rest of her life.16

  Joyce Hibbert, in her book Fragments of War: Stories of Survival of World War II, offers a glimpse into the magnitude of Florence’s responsibility: “From 1941 until the war’s end, [Florence] worked as head dietician in a war supplies plant in Scarborough. During the most intensive production period at the fuse-filling plant, shifts worked around the clock seven days a week and Mrs. Ignatieff was responsible for 8,000 meals every twenty-four hours.”17 In a Toronto Daily Star newspaper article about GECO’s food quality, Florence was referred to as “Mrs. V.P. Ignatieff, Chief Dietitian, and ‘Guiding Genius.’”18

  “Mom was very happy at GECO,” Paul remembers.19 “It was quite an amazing atmosphere at work, lots of effective, dedicated people. The leadership was very strong. The Hamiltons were very patriotic people. They didn’t make a lot of money on war business. They were very, very good employers, pioneers in engineering and feeding operations.”20

  Paul recalls visiting the cafeteria with his mom and seeing the feeding stations where food was passed out. “I went into the kitchen to see large vats of soup,” he recalls.21 As a young boy, he was especially impressed watching butchers cut up large sides of beef. He did not get the opportunity to visit the clean side of the plant, or to learn about the tunnel system. A fond memory Paul has of his mom’s days at GECO is of the aftermath of the 1944 snowstorm. “GECO’s parking lots had to be plowed” he reminisces, “and there were snowbanks as tall as houses to toboggan down.”22

  “She planned, developed nutritional menus,” Mika said, “and organized the preparation and serving of meals.”23

  Toward the end of the war, automobile maker Henry Ford heard about the Hamil
tons, who were managing an amazing war plant in Toronto. “He came up to see them,” Paul said.24 “The Hamilton brothers took him over to see food operations at GECO. He was quite impressed.”25 Henry offered Florence $40,000 to manage food operations for the Ford Empire worldwide. She didn’t take the job. “She deferred to Father,” Paul said, “out of respect. Socially, women didn’t excel above their husbands.”26

  Major Ignatieff, like most of the men in Canada’s fighting forces, could not return home during the war to see Florence, Paul, and Mika. Florence and Lizzie nurtured the children during their formative years. Even when Jim demobilized late in 1945, he saw his family for only a short time before he got a call from a friend. “Mike Pearson called him after the war,” Paul said, “and he said, ‘you’re going to fly to Quebec City tomorrow in the belly of a Lancaster bomber for a conference on food and agriculture.’”27 The Food and Agriculture Organization — the FAO — for the United Nations was founded at the conference, and Jim, armed with his background in agriculture, was one of the first to be hired. He moved the family to Washington, D.C., to work for the fledgling organization.

  A year later, Jim felt Paul and Mika were missing the benefits of living in Canada. He bought a four-hundred-acre farm with two hundred head of purebred Holstein and Guernsey cattle in Richmond, a small English/French town in Quebec, and although he continued his work in Washington, he moved his family north of the border. Florence managed the farm for about five years. Always an academic, Florence became interested in genetics, particularly in upgrading the quality of cattle through breeding.

  She saw some success, but when the FAO moved its headquarters from Washington to Rome in the mid-1950s, Jim and Florence relocated to Italy, where they stayed until he retired. “I adored living in Rome,” Paul says.28 “[Mother] was very fond of music and ballet and taught us to appreciate the arts, galleries, museums. It was a real treat to be taken around Rome by her. She could have been a leading guide of Rome.”29