Defence Industries Limited

Defence Industries Limited (DIL) was a subsidiary of Canadian Industries Limited (C-I-L), founded in 1939 to manufacture munitions for use in World War II. The company operated in number of locations in Canada, in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. Its Pickering Works shell-filling plant, along with nearby housing, grew into the town of Ajax.[1]

A worker tightens nose plugs of 500-pound bombs at DIL's Pickering Works plant in Ajax

History

Explosives manufacture

Canadian Industries Limited (C-I-L) created subsidiary Defence Industries Limited (DIL) to manufacture munitions in September 1939, and arranged a contract with the Canadian government to operate two small plants which manufactured TNT and cordite.[2]

In 1940 the Canadian government's Department of Munitions and Supply contracted DIL to refurbish the defunct British Munitions factory in Verdun, Quebec, for the manufacture of munitions. The plant began operations in May 1941.[2] By 1943 the company had constructed about 40 more buildings at the site.

In 1941 DIL also set up a facility in Windsor, Ontario, to manufacture carbamite, a component of cordite;[3] other explosive components were manufactured in Beloeil and Shawinigan, Quebec; Nobel, Ontario; and Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Shell-filling

DIL set up facilities in St. Paul l'Hermite and Ste Thérèse, Quebec, to fill shells with explosives.[2]

The company purchased 3,000 acres of farmland in Pickering Township, Ontario, for the purpose of building Pickering Works, a large munitions factory.[4] Construction began, and the DIL plant was opened in 1941.[5] It employed about 9,000 people, including about 7,000 women, and was the largest munitions production factory in the British Empire.[6] By the end of the war, the workers had filled more than 40 million percussion caps, detonators, bombs, anti-tank mines, armour-piercing and anti-aircraft shells.[7][8] Although the houses built for the DIL employees were intended to be temporary, after the war the occupants petitioned to buy them, and, after permanent foundations were built, the homes became part of a new town, which was named Ajax after HMS Ajax (22), a light cruiser of the Royal Navy during World War II.[9]

Other war materials

DIL's Montreal and Brownsburg plants made small arms. In Cornwall the company manufactured mustard gas.[2]

Post-war

As World War II drew to a close, most of the DIL plants were shut down. DIL was contracted by the federal government to co-ordinate the construction and operation of Chalk River Laboratories, a pilot plant for the production of plutonium using heavy water as a moderator, which was being built in northern Ontario as part of the Manhattan Project. Temporary houses from DIL's plant in the town of Nobel, Ontario were moved to the area, creating a new town, Deep River, to house the workers.[10]

In 1947, operation of the partially completed facility was taken over by the National Research Council; a number of DIL employees were hired by the NRC to provide continuity in the process. DIL continued to oversee construction in progress.[11]

List of DIL factories

Quebec

Ontario

Manitoba

References
  1. "Ajax goes to war". The Pictorial History of Ajax 1941/1972. Ajax Historical Board, 1972. page 17
  2. Serge Durflinger (1 November 2011). Fighting from Home: The Second World War in Verdun, Quebec. UBC Press. pp. 129–. ISBN 978-0-7748-4104-7.
  3. Canadian Chemistry and Process Industries. Westman Publications. 1945. p. 302.
  4. Mike Filey (September 1994). Toronto Sketches 3: The Way We Were. Dundurn. p. 135. ISBN 978-1-55002-227-8.
  5. "How a Town called Ajax got its name". The Chronicle, By Tracy Wright - April 17, 2018
  6. "Canadian Women At War on the Home Front". The Wayback Times, October 1, 2019 By Douglas Phillips
  7. "Once Upon a City: Women who were unsung heroes of war effort". Toronto Star, Janice Bradbeer, June 4, 2016
  8. "The bomb girls of Ajax". Legion Magazine, February 20, 2016 by D'Arcy Jenish
  9. "Celebrating the town named for a battleship", Dave LeBlanc, The Globe and Mail, June 3, 2005
  10. "The DIL-NRC-AECL Evolution". The Early History of Deep River and “the Plant”. October 2017. The Society for the Preservation of Canada’s Nuclear Heritage.
  11. Hurst; Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (1997). Canada Enters the Nuclear Age: A Technical History of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. pp. 6–. ISBN 978-0-7735-1601-4.
  12. Magda Fahrni (2018). "The Second World War: Wartime Production and War Efforts". In Dany Fougères; Roderick Macleod (eds.). Montreal The History of a North American City. Vol. 2. p. 39. ISBN 9780773551282.
  13. Matthew Evenden (2015). Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-electricity During Canada's Second World War. University of Toronto Press. p. 35. ISBN 9781442617124.
  14. Wilfrid Eggleston (1966). Canada's Nuclear Story. Harrap. p. 126. OCLC 613979783.
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