This is a wonderful exhibit. It provides a real flavour of what it was like to work at DIL how impressive it was that there were no safety issues or breaches of security how these women were role models for the next generation demonstrating that women workers could be reliable, efficient and hard working how this munitions plant was the largest in the British commonwealth providing an essential service to the war effort and most importantly, the exhibit tells the story of how Ajax was created. What a wonderful historical piece and something that should be viewed by all residents. Congratulations to all those involved on a job well done!
Posted by Dorothy Anderson, 7 February 2013 at 21:20
My Mother came from Saskatoon to work in the plant, she is 97 years old now and still talks about those days. I can't wait to show her this. I found it very interesting myself.
Posted by Leonard Hicken, 17 September 2015 at 18:33
I thought you might be interested in a story with a bit of a different slant about my experiences with DIL 10 years after the war ended. My family emigrated from England in 1955 and we moved into 45 Cedar Street (then the Queens Court Apartments) in Ajax. I was 8 years old at the time. I believe the population of Ajax was about 5000 people. From my home, it was just a short jaunt across Highway 401 and the railroad tracks and I was into the delightful playground that was the remains of the DIL site. The whole area was totally accessible. No fences, no guards, just the complete freedom to roam around at will. And roam my friends and I certainly did. Most of the warehouses were still there and there was wartime stuff all over the place. A small field beside one of the warehouses was completely littered with wooden ammunition boxes. We built forts out of these and staged BB gun fights to our hearts content. There were a couple of other things there that I have not seen mentioned in any other documentation. Firstly, there were a lot of dummy training rifles made out of wood. These were full sized rifles. Most of these were broken, so finding one intact made you the envy of the neighbourhood kids. Secondly, there were a number of wooden target stands. They may have had metal clips for attaching paper targets, but my memory’s a bit fuzzy on that. Another area had stacks of used, very large tires, likely belonging to specialty vehicles used to move items around the DIL site during the war. Moving south towards the lake, we would come across the remains of the bunker magazines. The storage structures themselves had been removed, but all the earthen berms were intact. Here we would play “take the hill” and reenact Davy Crockett at the Alamo. Sometimes my dad would take my brother and I to one of the berms and we’d practice target shooting at tin cans with his .22 rifle. To the west of the berms was the town dump, which always had great stuff to rummage through and lots of rats to take pot shots at with the BB guns. We used to visit it regularly and I can still remember the day we found our great treasure. Someone must have been clearing out one of the warehouses because on this special day we arrived to find a large number of gas masks, new and in their original boxes. Our joy was unbounded. Just west of this was Duffins Creek, where we learned to swim and built rafts to pole downstream to the lake. In winter we’d skate on its surface and “test” its ice floes in the spring. Heading north towards the 401 was the woods locally known as “The Willows” where we’d hike and camp and cook hot dogs over a fire. Some of the empty houses on the farms expropriated by DIL were still standing. These were always a thrill to explore, never knowing what or who might be lurking inside. The DIL site was not totally abandoned. Some of the original buildings had been taken over by various businesses and new factories had been built. A regular routine I performed was to go around to these businesses and factories collecting thrown away pop bottles, which were worth 2 cents upon return to a store selling that brand. You may think that was hardly worthwhile, but remember this. I could buy a chocolate bar or a bag of potato chips for a dime, a hot dog for 15 cents, a hamburger for a quarter, and an order of fish and chips for 35 cents (from Bluebell Fish & Chips in the Ajax Plaza, if I recall the name correctly). This was truly a great place for a kid to grow up. I only wish today’s kids could experience the freedom and adventure that was available to us in the 1950’s. One other thing I’d like to mention. In part 1, Louise Johnson mentions 2 brick houses at the end of Glynn Road that were built sometime after the war. I lived in one of these houses (#60) from 1958 through 1966. I don’t recall having met Louise, but she might have known my parents, Nora and Leonard Hicken, both now deceased.
Posted by John Stacey, 8 February 2018 at 16:32
Thank you for enabling me to see this. It gives a more complete picture of Mansell Stacey, my dad (and my hero). He struggled to raise a family in Oshawa on the very low pay of a school teacher and worked at DIL every summer. It was sometimes difficult to get to work as he was forever patching worn-out tires on his car which several DIL employees relied on to get to work (a carpool). Rubber tires were so scarce that without replacements a perfectly good car would become useless scrap. He saw his fair share of accidents on the job, people losing hands, fingers, etc, especially to the very explosive TNT. The heroes of WW2 were not all in the European battlefront, many were right here at home, both men and women.
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This is a wonderful exhibit. It provides a real flavour of what it was like to work at DIL how impressive it was that there were no safety issues or breaches of security how these women were role models for the next generation demonstrating that women workers could be reliable, efficient and hard working how this munitions plant was the largest in the British commonwealth providing an essential service to the war effort and most importantly, the exhibit tells the story of how Ajax was created. What a wonderful historical piece and something that should be viewed by all residents. Congratulations to all those involved on a job well done!
My Mother came from Saskatoon to work in the plant, she is 97 years old now and still talks about those days. I can't wait to show her this. I found it very interesting myself.
I thought you might be interested in a story with a bit of a different slant about my experiences with DIL 10 years after the war ended. My family emigrated from England in 1955 and we moved into 45 Cedar Street (then the Queens Court Apartments) in Ajax. I was 8 years old at the time. I believe the population of Ajax was about 5000 people. From my home, it was just a short jaunt across Highway 401 and the railroad tracks and I was into the delightful playground that was the remains of the DIL site. The whole area was totally accessible. No fences, no guards, just the complete freedom to roam around at will. And roam my friends and I certainly did. Most of the warehouses were still there and there was wartime stuff all over the place. A small field beside one of the warehouses was completely littered with wooden ammunition boxes. We built forts out of these and staged BB gun fights to our hearts content. There were a couple of other things there that I have not seen mentioned in any other documentation. Firstly, there were a lot of dummy training rifles made out of wood. These were full sized rifles. Most of these were broken, so finding one intact made you the envy of the neighbourhood kids. Secondly, there were a number of wooden target stands. They may have had metal clips for attaching paper targets, but my memory’s a bit fuzzy on that. Another area had stacks of used, very large tires, likely belonging to specialty vehicles used to move items around the DIL site during the war. Moving south towards the lake, we would come across the remains of the bunker magazines. The storage structures themselves had been removed, but all the earthen berms were intact. Here we would play “take the hill” and reenact Davy Crockett at the Alamo. Sometimes my dad would take my brother and I to one of the berms and we’d practice target shooting at tin cans with his .22 rifle. To the west of the berms was the town dump, which always had great stuff to rummage through and lots of rats to take pot shots at with the BB guns. We used to visit it regularly and I can still remember the day we found our great treasure. Someone must have been clearing out one of the warehouses because on this special day we arrived to find a large number of gas masks, new and in their original boxes. Our joy was unbounded. Just west of this was Duffins Creek, where we learned to swim and built rafts to pole downstream to the lake. In winter we’d skate on its surface and “test” its ice floes in the spring. Heading north towards the 401 was the woods locally known as “The Willows” where we’d hike and camp and cook hot dogs over a fire. Some of the empty houses on the farms expropriated by DIL were still standing. These were always a thrill to explore, never knowing what or who might be lurking inside. The DIL site was not totally abandoned. Some of the original buildings had been taken over by various businesses and new factories had been built. A regular routine I performed was to go around to these businesses and factories collecting thrown away pop bottles, which were worth 2 cents upon return to a store selling that brand. You may think that was hardly worthwhile, but remember this. I could buy a chocolate bar or a bag of potato chips for a dime, a hot dog for 15 cents, a hamburger for a quarter, and an order of fish and chips for 35 cents (from Bluebell Fish & Chips in the Ajax Plaza, if I recall the name correctly). This was truly a great place for a kid to grow up. I only wish today’s kids could experience the freedom and adventure that was available to us in the 1950’s. One other thing I’d like to mention. In part 1, Louise Johnson mentions 2 brick houses at the end of Glynn Road that were built sometime after the war. I lived in one of these houses (#60) from 1958 through 1966. I don’t recall having met Louise, but she might have known my parents, Nora and Leonard Hicken, both now deceased.
Thank you for enabling me to see this. It gives a more complete picture of Mansell Stacey, my dad (and my hero). He struggled to raise a family in Oshawa on the very low pay of a school teacher and worked at DIL every summer. It was sometimes difficult to get to work as he was forever patching worn-out tires on his car which several DIL employees relied on to get to work (a carpool). Rubber tires were so scarce that without replacements a perfectly good car would become useless scrap. He saw his fair share of accidents on the job, people losing hands, fingers, etc, especially to the very explosive TNT. The heroes of WW2 were not all in the European battlefront, many were right here at home, both men and women.
Comments may be edited for appropriate language and HTML.
All fields are required.
Not all comments will be posted.
Your email address will be stored so that we may contact you again about your comment, but will not be displayed to the public, or otherwise shared, without your permission.
Comments will not be posted until they have been reviewed.
To make a a simple paragraph break, simply hit [Enter] twice