History of Ajax, Ontario
The town of Ajax, Ontario in Canada evolved out of the Defence Industries Limited Pickering Works munitions plant built during the World War II, but its history begins much earlier.
In the first half of the 19th century, the Pickering Village, now a neighbourhood in Ajax, evolved as the major population centre of the Township, supported by a timber and agricultural boom.
After the start of the World War II in 1939, the Government of Canada expropriated most of the farmland in what is now southern part of Ajax, to establish a munitions plant.
The plant site, along with the residences and the facilities established for the workers, evolved into a self-contained community which was named after the British warship HMS Ajax.
The government mandated the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) to develop the site and its surrounding area into a modern industrial town.
[16] The growth accelerated after Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe proposed building a road linking London in the west to Kingston in the east.
[22] The inn served as a home for the family, and also operated as a stage station, providing service for stagecoach drivers, passengers, and horses traveling along the Kingston Road.
Local farms supplied milk to the Brown's Cheese Factory in the northern part of present-day Ajax, as well as to creameries in Whitby, Brooklin, Hampton and Toronto.
The major apple cultivars included Baldwin, Blenheim Orange, Gravenstein, King, Northern Spy, Red Astrachan, Russett, Rhode Island Greening, Snow, Tolman Sweet, Wagener and Wealthy.
Initially a holiday cottage community, it gradually developed into a permanent settlement, with its own school, church, fire station, and Ratepayers' Association.
In the late 1920s, the permanent population of what later became the town of Ajax was probably less than 200 people, but increased significantly during the summer months when Toronto residents occupied the cottages.
So, DIL hired women including those mass-recruited from outside Ontario, based on the National Selection Service registry that maintained lists of potential labour pools.
[44] The site had a post office, a fire department, a library, a Bank of Commerce branch, a hospital, a school, a church, a grocery store, and local transit.
[40] Production at DIL started slowing down in the winter of 1944, as the Allied victory in the World War II seemed assured and the demand for shells declined.
[52] To avoid unemployment among the war veterans returning from Europe, the Government had announced a plan to pay for their education, and the university's downtown Toronto campus had been unable to accommodate the increasing number of engineering students.
The Ontario County Clerk M. Manning had petitioned Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, describing the frustration of the residents.
[59] In a September 1951 letter to S. A. Gitterman, CMHC's Chief, Architectural Division, Finley requested the authorization to buy steel at a premium of about $100 per ton.
Herb Hunter, a former DIL manager, organized such a group, and presented a petition to the Department of Municipal Affairs of the Ontario Government on 9 November 1950.
[66] The Board enacted several by-laws, including for:[67] Meanwhile, CMHC remained the major property owner, and George Finley served as an industrial advisor.
[62] The Association thanked the Improvement District Board members and officials for their service to Ajax, but emphasized that it was Canada's political tradition for people to be governed and taxed by elected representatives.
Apart from the council, two other elected bodies participated in management of municipal affairs in Ajax: the Hydro Commission and the Public School Board.
However, this led to a political controversy, as the citizens in neighbouring communities relied on municipal funds for local development, despite contributing to the federal taxes.
In 1957, all the undeveloped land held by CMHC in Ajax was sold to Principal Investments, a development firm operated by Lou and Ray Charles.
The plant was owned by several entities in succession, including DIL, CMHC, the municipality, and a private company called the Ajax Energy Corporation.
These included Bayly Engineering Limited (later AEG Sorting Systems), which moved from Camp X to Ajax in 1948, working on research, development, manufacture and repair of industrial equipment.
[74] The company moved its main operation to North York in 1968, concerned about the dust from still-unpaved Hunt Street impairing the performance of sensitive inspection instruments.
[77] Slough Estates, a British property investment and development company, purchased a part of the DIL site in 1950, and built an industrial park with 18 rental buildings.
However, the Ajax Mayor Clark Mason engaged in extensive negotiations to retain his town as a distinct municipality, and presented his case before the Province.
Eventually, the Province agreed with Ajax's proposal, on the basis that it resulted in a more even distribution of population, and that the town had a strong sense of community since the DIL days.
[57] Although initially planned as an industrial town, Ajax gradually became a dormitory community, as people employed in Toronto moved to suburban areas.
