Bomb Girls

by Barbara Dickson

  She no longer worked. “The Food and Agricultural Organization had a policy,” Mika explained, “as most large organizations [did, and] including universities frowned [upon] hiring wives of their professional staff.”30

  “Mother suggested I should learn some French,” Paul said of his days in Rome.31 He attended the University of Lausanne, where he not only learned French, but also met his future wife, Katharine. They married in 1960.

  Jim and Florence returned to Canada to live out their retirement in Quebec. Florence died in 1990, with Vladimir following four years later. They are buried in a family plot in Melbourne, Quebec, alongside Vladimir’s parents.

  Paul Ignatieff enjoyed a long career in Canada and internationally with UNICEF, a children’s relief agency that brought food, clothing, and healthcare to children who faced famine and disease after the Second World War. Paul attributes his big break in securing his job at UNICEF to his mother’s university friends.

  In 1975 he and Katharine were captured by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Phnom Pen, the capital of Cambodia. “We were providing food and medical supplies to member organizations,” Paul said.32 They, along with members of other relief agencies, fled to the French embassy, where they hid as the city was besieged. Paul remained calm. “I was not afraid of losing my life.… In a stressful situation you made a decision whether you were going to survive or not; and you did it.”33 Thankfully, they survived and were evacuated to Bangkok.

  Today, Professor Paul Ignatieff, having been endowed with the title of Professor of Social Science by the University of Glasgow, lives in the south of France with his son and grandchildren. Mika married an American attorney who became a human rights professor and university administrator, and the first American to be president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Mika focused her career on community development, helping economically challenged neighbourhoods to regenerate. She and her husband live in Colorado.

  Paul says, “I’m immensely proud of my mother and full of admiration for her. She was a very stimulating woman.”34

  Mika adds, “My mother never was a follower — she was an initiator and organizer. She had a good sense of humour and told us many funny tales about various people who had worked with her.”35

  On the Clean Side

  Don’t Drop That Det!: Molly Danniels

  Molly Danniels joined GECO in 1942, at the age of twenty, after hearing about a job opportunity there through a friend. Her first memory of GECO dates from when she was hired. Security had trouble fingerprinting her because she had a wart on one of her fingers.

  Molly’s duties included packing detonators the size of her small fingernail with explosives. Her supervisors cautioned her and her shop mates that if they punctured one it would blow up, causing severe injury, if not death. Molly admitted, in hindsight, and with the wisdom that comes with age, that her work was quite dangerous, and that she “wouldn’t do [it] today.” While she and the rest of the team were encouraged to be efficient in their work, safety always came first. The management worked tirelessly to meet production quotas to supply the armed forces, but the Hamiltons did not pass along those quotas to their workers for their own safety.

  Even with adherence to myriad safety regulations, accidents did occur. Molly remembered one mishap that happened in her workshop. A tracer shell accidentally ignited, filling the entire shop with a large flare. Twenty-five women quit immediately. “There were other small incidents,” she said, but they were “hush-hush, like nursing home deaths.”36

  Despite the dangerous nature of her work, Molly collected many fond memories of her time at GECO. She remembered men getting “fresh” with the women operators. The girls used to say light-heartedly, “Watch that fellow — he’s getting tricky.” She recalled the famous snowstorm of December 1944. Only three people made it to the bus stop with Molly to catch the GECO bus to work. They made it to the plant to find just six women in Molly’s shop.

  Molly took advantage of the “Victory Gardens” at the plant and eagerly planted carrots in her vegetable plot. Unfortunately, “the Scarboro clay wouldn’t give anything up,” she said, not even with the use of a pick ax.37

  Toward the end of the war, GECO management asked if any of the girls in her workshop knew how to type. Molly, having previous typing experience, offered her services and transferred from the Danger Zone to administration, where she worked as a teletypist for the remainder of the war. She completed her days at GECO late in the summer of 1945, after most employees had moved on.

  After the war, Molly married her love, Fred, and raised a family in Scarborough, near Warden and Lawrence, not far from where she did her part for the war effort. Molly and Fred moved to the Bluffs area of Scarborough in 1990. Fred took ill in 2009 and they moved into a retirement home, where he passed away in February 2010. Molly was reunited with him in March 2014 at ninety-two years of age.

  “Truckerette”: Hilda Keast

  Hilda Eileen June Keast was born in 1927 in Toronto. Tragically, and all too often for the time, three of Hilda siblings died before they reached adulthood. Her sister Mary died as an infant, in what might be called “crib death” today; her brother Tommy, at six months, kicked away a blanket that had been wrapped around a hot water bottle, and was scalded to death; and Pearl, a twin to another sibling, died at six months due to an ear infection.

  Hilda decided at a young age that gaining real world experience was what she wanted, more so than formal education. She left school armed with a Grade 7 education and entered the workforce as a house cleaner.

  Hilda’s mom and dad received regular dairy deliveries from their local milkman, like most families in Toronto during the 1940s. Few girls, however, fell in love with their milkman. Hilda, at fifteen years of age, grew fond of Walter Harris, their Silverwoods dairy man, even though Walter was fourteen years older. “Dad would have killed me if he found out,” Hilda admitted when re-telling the story to her children.

  When Canada went to war, Walter left Silverwoods to join the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps with the 86th Bridge Company. He fought as a despatch motorcycle rider and was wounded by mortar fire when, while under attack, he rescued a Polish soldier. He pulled the soldier to safety under a truck and Walter was hit. He spent six days in hospital then went right back to his unit to fight. Walter received a citation and was promoted to lance corporal.

  Meanwhile, Hilda did her part for the war effort by joining GECO. Hilda lived on North Bonnington in the Birchmount and St. Clair area of Scarboro at the time, so she enjoyed the unique privilege of walking to work. At GECO, she worked as a “truckerette.” She was responsible for the delicate, precarious transportation of empties and filled munitions through the plant. It was strenuous work but Hilda and her workmates were more than ready for the challenge.

  Hilda talked about her days at GECO long after the war ended. “She had a lot of fun at GECO,” her son John says.38 “‘There were all these girls,’ she said, ‘all around the same age. They built bombs and there were tunnels under there on Civic Road.’”39

  After the war, Walter returned to Silverwoods. They were married in 1949 and had three children. Hilda died in 1990 from complications of Hodgkin’s disease. Walter predeceased Hilda, dying in 1977.

  On the back of a faded photograph from her GECO days, Hilda carefully documented the names of all her “truck mates.” She wrote, “Taken at G.E.C.O. — General Engineering Company — sometime in 1944. We trucked skids of ammunition from X-ray Dept. to shop to be finished or from shop to shop.”40 Hilda noted four women accompanied each truck. She also documented her shifts: “7–3, 3–11, and 11–7.”41 A short note accompanied a shop photo that appeared in the company’s newspaper: “In the early days of Scarboro trucking on the ‘clean side’ was done by men, then the manpower shortage intervened and like so many other war jobs, the women stepped into the breach and took over.”42 The family also has a picture of Hilda with her “Ping Pones,” perhaps a Ping-Pong team to which she belonged. H
ilda memorialized each team member by name on the reverse,43 including her sister who also worked at GECO.

  Hilda Keast (back row, second from left) poses happily with her fellow “Truckerettes.” Courtesy of John Alan Harris.

  Hilda’s written words carry her sentiment across the decades: “What fun we had.”44

  Yellow Canary: Carol LeCappelain

  Carol LeCappelain, born in November 1921, first learned about GECO from a newspaper advertisement in her local paper, the North Bay Nugget. She was earning $12 a month at that time. After reading GECO would pay her $22 per week, it did not take much to convince this nineteen-year-old to move to Toronto.

  Carol’s first day at GECO was on October 27, 1941, and she completed her service on June 23, 1945. She earned three diamond badges, sewn on her uniform sleeve, to commemorate her dedicated service. Although proud of those, she was disappointed that she did not receive her fourth diamond because the war ended. She never missed a day of work.

  Carol was hired by the Inspection Board of the United Kingdom and Canada. She was responsible for inspecting filled munitions in her workshop before they left the plant. She was part of quality assurance at GECO, specifically involved in the inspection of No. 33G fuses: fuses filled in Building No. 33, Shop G. She wore a navy turban to identify herself as a government employee, a “G.I.” — Government Inspector — and a red armband to identify her as an inspector of No. 33G fuses.

  As a bench leader, her duties included ensuring the time fuses could be set easily, something that involved calibrating a series of numbered grooves etched into the base, including two rings that could be set to take a certain amount of time to go off so that a shell would explode at a certain distance from a gun. The bottom ring could be rotated to lengthen or reduce the time lapse before detonation. She also had to ensure that the layer of gunpowder was applied safely and correctly, and that the waterproof seal had been affixed properly. Carol would then escort the skid of ready fuses through the underground tunnel system to the Proof Yards at the south end of the plant, where they would be tested.45

  Carol LeCappelain was a government inspector who inspected fuses at GECO through all stages of filling them. She took her job to heart, once rejecting an entire skid of filled ammunition (approximately two thousand fuses) because their timing rings didn’t turn easily enough. She completed almost four years of faithful service at GECO, with perfect attendance. Courtesy of Barbara Dickson.

  Carol took her job very seriously. The fuses had to be perfect, without the slightest defect. “I didn’t want any soldiers killed due to a faulty fuse,” she said.46 She could sleep at night only if she knew that each fuse would do what the soldiers expected it to do — ignite and burn long enough to reach its target.

  Carol recalled that women preferred to work on the “gunpowder” line of the plant, as opposed to the “high explosives” area, due to yellowing of their hands from working with tetryl.

  While she did not receive a paycheque from GECO because she was a Canadian government employee, Carol viewed herself as part of GECO’s family.

  Carol passed away on New Year’s Day, 2014.

  For the Love of Her Country: Helen Leslie

  Helen Gertrude Browes was born on the nineteenth of May, 1909, in West Hill, Ontario, a small community nestled on the eastern edge of Scarboro. In 1925, at sixteen years of age, Helen married Howard Leslie, a First World War veteran who had been only fifteen years old when he enlisted and fought for freedom. Helen and Howard started their family, bringing five little ones, including a daughter, Jacqueline, into the fold over the next decade. Life was good.

  However, tragedy struck when their third child contracted polio at the age of six during the autumn of 1937. Her mom and dad took her to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, where doctors put her in an iron lung, an early type of respirator, because she could not breathe on her own. To add to their angst, the entire family went into quarantine for six months; as a result, Helen and Howard were unable to see their little girl. Howard lost his job, too. Because Canada’s health care system was still evolving, free doctor and hospital care were not available, and their daughter’s illness took a steep toll on Helen and Howard’s finances. It would take two years, and a war, before Howard found another job. Helen needed to find a job too, to help pay for their little girl’s staggering medical bills. GECO offered a wonderful solution.

  In addition to working full-time at GECO, Helen Leslie, along with her husband, raised five children, including caring for their daughter who, diagnosed with polio at the age of six, spent many months in the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Courtesy of Jackie Eden.

  Life was busy. Howard and Helen worked full-time. Helen took the GECO bus to the plant and worked shifts, even overnight. Howard’s mom, Maggie, helped care for the little ones at home on Newmarket Avenue. Their daughter continued to convalesce in hospital.

  “Mom was a very busy woman,” Jackie recalls. “She worked, cared for our sister when she could come home for a visit, and cared for us other kids. She was very thankful for our grandmother’s help.”47

  Jackie remembers her mom speaking about her work at GECO. Helen recounted the story of a woman being injured by an explosion in the workshop next to hers. It made Helen skittish around explosives, yet she filled munitions out of economic necessity and for her love of her country. Jackie remembers with pride, “Mom always did say she did her part to support the war effort.”48

  Helen Leslie’s connection to GECO did not stop with the war’s end. Harold and Helen and their younger children would become the first residents to live at GECO in its newly renovated postwar emergency housing.

  A Woman of Sorrow: Peggy MacKay

  Mrs. Peggy MacKay of Shop 35B filled primers. While being interviewed for an article in the plant newspaper, she was focused so intensely on filling fuses that she did not pause from her work during the questions.49 The article revealed a life of sadness and sorrow: her son, Sergeant William MacKay, had been reported missing;50 her husband, Private Peter MacKay, had been transferred recently to “parts unknown,” not knowing his son was missing;51 and her two little boys had drowned eight years earlier, at the tender ages of five and seven, back in Dundee, Scotland, her homeland.52 Only two little girls remained — Stella, nine, and Barbara, aged six.53 Peggy’s sister was killed in the London Blitz, and three uncles and ten cousins were lost aboard the ill-fated ship Benato.54

  “I often think that every primer I help fill may be helping some other mother’s son,” she said in the newspaper interview. Although, “all I do seems so small beside what the folks over across there are going through.”55

  Mrs. MacKay was such an exemplary employee that GECO hired fellow employee and prominent Canadian sculptor Howard Pfeiffer to construct a beautiful head-and-shoulders brass statuette of her in the spring of 1943 as “a tangible symbol … of the vital part that women are playing in the furnishing of ‘tools’ of war to fighting men of the United Nations.”56 Peggy spent more than three months sitting in her kitchen perfectly still, every weekend, with a piece of ammunition tucked in the crook of her arm, as Hal moulded and chiselled his masterpiece, titled War Worker.57

  “To us at ‘Scarboro,’” the author of the employee newspaper story stated, “it has particular significance for it will form a permanent record of the patriotic devotion of the women of this Plant and will keep their memory green long after the peace bells have rung.”58

  Management proudly displayed the attractive, heart-stirring sculpture in GECO’s cafeteria. Peggy dedicated every waking moment to the war effort. She helped raise funds to purchase a Salvation Army mobile canteen used overseas to serve tired troops.59 In addition, she gave blood regularly.

  Sadly, not all was what it seemed. Peggy’s true-life story barely resembled the tragic version inked for newspaper stories, yet was still just as heartbreaking. Decades later, Peggy’s daughter Stella, one of the wee lasses mentioned in the GECO Fusilier’s initial account, share
d her own recollections.

  Stella’s mother, Margaret “Peggy” Ferguson Wallace was born in 1908 in Dundee, Scotland, to an impoverished family. Life was tough. At thirteen years of age, she worked in a jute mill to help feed her family. In 1923, at the age of fifteen, Peggy met her future husband, ten years her senior. He offered to take her away from her meagre existence, promising a more comfortable life. They married quickly. Their first son was born three years later in 1926. Perhaps Peggy felt secure for the first time in her life.

  Any sense of stability was short-lived. Her husband left her and their infant son, and sailed for Canada in April 1927. His hope was to build a better life for his family and send for them when he got settled. Peggy, possibly feeling abandoned and needing security for both her and her little boy, immediately met another man who fathered two sons with her, and a daughter, Stella, born in 1933.

  Eight years after leaving his homeland and his family, Peggy’s husband wired money to Peggy to join him in Canada. Inexplicably, Peggy sailed for Canada, leaving her two little boys behind with their father, with no note or explanation. She took her firstborn and little Stella, then three. “[He] fell to pieces when Peggy left with his little girl,” Stella said, then reasoned, “She must have been so poor in Scotland, so desperate for a new life, a new start.”60

  The boys’ dad, unable to provide ongoing care, relinquished custody and moved them to an orphanage. Peggy reunited with her husband in Canada, who must have had quite a shock to see a little girl disembark from the ship Letitia with his wife and son.

  GECOite Peggy MacKay, an exemplary employee, sat for fellow munitions worker and renowned sculptor Harold Pfeiffer while he moulded and chiselled his masterpiece, titled War Worker. Management proudly displayed the attractive sculpture in GECO’s cafeteria for the duration of the war. Courtesy of Archives of Ontario.