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many other services, fection, Kt is by five full time officers and a 20-man se ED AJAX FIRE DEPARTMENT Fire insurance rates are among the Chief Winter holding the com s excellent fire pro- Chief is Cecll Winter who has Lowest in the province, The pany"s mascot, volunteer force, The served the town from its early days. Fire losses are low and pn" force is shown above with Fire THE OSHAWA TIMES, Tuesdoy, December 16, 1958 reper ~(Photo by John Mills) MAYOR WELCOMES DKY-CLEANER yor William Parish of is seen welcoming Glen at the opening of the Ma Adnx Small new Harwood dry « cleaning establishment located in the Ajax Shopping Centre, Glen has provided rest rooms in the new premises, ~Photo by John Mills AJAX HISTORY (Continued from Page 6) fa 1831 and in the next 47 months 160,000 were added to the popula- thon, WATER HIGHWAY Pickering Township shared In hs growing time in common with the rest of the province, The St, Lawrence and Lake On. tario were the great highway of communication, In our day we Cap and Det Line, Now the site of Canadian Automotive Trim, parts of the line are in use by small industries, The proof tower still stands, The garage on Ca- nadian Automotive Trim site is part of the azide Mne, Built of massive reinforced concrete, it was cheaper to utilize it rather than attempt to remove it, Pellet .and Tracer line next came into production, standing north of the present Fisher « Lud. - | low Plant, The offices of the line difficulties of travel by land not eased until the Grand y was built in 1836, y as 1016 a steamboat was operation on Lake Ontario, the early half of this come the 1940's, war with Germany allies, The need for a of munitions, pro danger of enemy is Tris Holl WW i il , Was an - mainline railway, ample , removed from a large cen: ose enough to supply a force, In March, 11, sod was turned after the been expropriated from many former owners, LDING STARTS In the following hectic months the area could have been called FIPrysEe : HH @eir hundreds churned the roads ® a pulp bringing in supplies, A seven-track siding where the pres. ent Dowty Plant is located was erowded with freight ears. bells 3 Fi | Harwood avenue in as a mere farm lane, , Which ended at 401, then construction, Farmer Heron sture his cows there, LINES t ne to be built and I § = | Z i g He g were purchased after the war and became the Legion Hall on Harwood North, pow Penny: worth's store, Line One, which started at the old Fisher « Ludlow building and continued down to Magazine 120, now houses Kitchen Installations and Stark Electronics, This line produced 40 millemeter shells, Line two started at the present Aga Radiator Company plant and continued south to the Dowty South Plant, This line produced three-inch mortar bombs and naval shells, Line 3 began at what is now Atlas Tag Company and continus ed south to the old W, L, Smith plant, North American Steel, Cometold Hankseraft and others occupy many of the buildings, 8.7 anti-aircraft shells were produced in Line 3. Line 4, now completely demol. ished, was situated on the site now largely occupled by Lake Vista Gardens, Here was produc: ed armor - piercing shot, Forty million shells were produced, There were four fatalities by explosions or burns, a small tell considering the product and over 4% years' production, STAFF BUILDINGS Auxiliary to the production lines was a maintenance staff housed in what has been until recently the Hydro building, The machine shop used to be in the old E, F, Dow factory since de stroyed by fire, Nine miles of fence guarded by those shifts of guards hum. production was the bering 340 people enclosed the en tire plant area, Within this was 20 miles of rallway trackage. Three englpes handled the shunt. ing chores within the plant to the sidings along the main line, What is now the shopping cen- tre was the men's dormitory area, One remaining dormitory houses Ken Smith and a catering businéss, A double row of wom- en's dormitories extended from a point south of what is now St, Andrew's School to the Pickering Beach road, A huge cafeteria, commissary and laundry service met the needs of the workers, St. Bernadette's first school building was first located in the men's dormitory area, Over 9000 people were employ- ed at one time at the peak of production, PROVIDE HOUSES In 1042 a start was made In providing houses for war work- ers, The first 200 were built west of Harwood to Windsor, Queen on the south and Edward on the north, The east 100 followed late In 1042, Then the last 300 from Tudor street west were complet. ed in 1043, Prefabricated, the war- time homes were erected in rec- ord time, The wartime area wae lald out In the modern concept, eliminat- ing straight streets and regimens tation, a fact for which we can be grateful today, as the north area has a permanency in that most of the homes if not all are owned by those who live in them, Instead of depreciating, the area has considerably appreciated in value, In the early days the plant was known as the Pickering Works, The railway siding bore the name the area was named Ajax after HMS Ajax which, in company with HMS Exeter and HMS Achilles, was responsible for the bottling up of the German pocket battleship Graf Von Spee and ifs destruction by scuttling at the hands of its commander, Mier V-J day and V-E day plant production ground slowly to a halt, By the end of 1045 plant machinery was put In mothballs, TNT buildings ned and the question arose what to do with it UNIVERSITY DIVISION For the time being in the years immediately following the war the University of Toronto took over a large part of the area and established the Ajax Division, University of Toronto, to provide accommodation for the influx of veterans desiring to complete their interrupted college educa tion, In the following three years some 3000 veterans passed through, taking their final year in Toronto, Meanwhile other parts of the plant were put to good use by War Assets Corporation as a clearing area for huge quantities of war surplus material, The fu ture of Ajax, the largest war asset of all, was still in doublt, Control of the area passed from Wartime Housing ltd, to the comparatively new crown comp pany, Central Mortgage and Hous ing Corporation, An attempt was made to turn over the Ajax holdings to Picker- ing township for a nominal sum but the council of that year turns ed down the offer, Then the suggestion (credited to George Finley) that Ajax be developed as a model industrial town was made and accepled, Existing bulldlings vacated by the University of Toronto and War Assets Corp,, made it fairly easy to induce many of our earliest industries to locate here, Capital investment was kept to a mini mum, : ACHIEVES PROMINENCE By 1060 Ajax was achieving a certain prominence and exciting a certain amount of Jentous¥ among other municipalities who were competing for industries in the post-war boom, Dileo, It was shortly after the Battle of the River Plate that (Continued on Page 12) Robert FOR FINE WEDDING INVITATIONS AJAX - PHONE 835 Res, 10 Parry Road--Office Rear Shopping Centre Kerion PRINTING SHOP FACILITIES BAYLY ST. ® COMPLETE MACHINE @ TOOLS, DIES, BRAZING AND WELDING OF ALL TYPES OF MATERIAL KELVIN-THOMPSON CO. LIMITED IMPORT, ASSEMBLY & DISTRIBUTION OF THE JONES PICK-UP BALER--U.K., GRASSO AIR TOOLS & COMPRESSORS--HOLLAND AGENTS THE BRITISH OXYGEN CO. LTD. HUNTINGDON LABORATORIES LTD. AJAX, ONT. @ DESIGNERS AND MANUFACTURERS OF SPECIAL PURPOSE MCY, ® PRESS WORK AND SUB- CONTRACT PRODUCTION ® AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT 7