Cordite plant; My mother's winter behind barbed wire

Cordite plant, My mother's winter behind barbed wire

TM speech October 2018

One winter day in 1940 my grandfather decided to take his 6 children, including my mother tobogganing.  My mother’s family farm was outside of Winnipeg towards Dugald, just after where the the flood way is now when you head out Dugald Road.  They found a man-made hill, well really a bunker.  A guard arrived and told them they were not allowed to be there and they had better get outside of the fence.  My grandfather replied that they lived inside the fence and pointed to the farm house.  The guard grunted and said they had better return there.

Greetings

It is 1941, the depression has been hard.  Inflation is crazy.  A war is looming.  There is work just outside of Winnipeg.  A train will get you there in 30 min from downtown, no charge.  The train runs 4 times a day.  You can even live there in a nice residence, they say is like a nice hotel.  The work is good except for the possibility of explosion.  More than 4000 people from Winnipeg and the surrounding area decided it was worth it to work at the Transcona Cordite plant. 

My mother and her family lived for a winter inside the fence of the Transcona Cordite Plant although they did not work there.

In 1940 Canada decided there was a need to produce cordite for the war effort.  WW 2 was just warming up.  A site in Transcona and the neighboring municipality of Springfield was chosen.  This site was chosen because of good access to water, abundant electricity and good rail service.  (That this was prime agricultural land and that my Grandfather owned part of it was not of any concern to the crown corporation known as Defense Industries of Canada.)  The government of Manitoba was anxious to have both the employment and manufacturing located here.  The book Abandoned Manitoba explains the reasons well.

Cordite is a propellant that looks like brown colored twine.  It is a smokeless replacement for gunpowder.  It contains 3 main explosive ingredients, nitro guanidine, nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. 

The Manitoba Historical Society explains in its website, “Construction of the complex cost $20 million, {which would translate into 352 million dollars in now,} and, at its height, the facility consisted of 230 buildings, including a hospital, machine shops, offices, residences, telephone exchange building, laundry, and numerous production structures. Buildings were widely spaced to minimize the extent of damage in the event of accidental explosions. At the core of the facility was a three-storey factory and twin-stack power plant. Given the sensitive nature of goods produced here, the site had its own fire hall. Daily water usage amounted to some 10 million gallons. Discharge of waste water from the plant was carried to the Red River in a channel through the site that came to be known as Cordite Ditch.

The abundance of explosives posed a serious workplace hazard which necessitated strict safety protocols. Workers caught smoking, or even possessing matches, were sometimes punished with jail terms and fines.” 

How did my mother’s family end up living inside the cordite compound? 3 people owned property on the 800 acres that became the Transcona Cordite Plant.  They were all expropriated.  This means the government buys your land at a price they determine with you having no say in the matter. Two owners did not have a residence they were paid out.   One family was able to move quickly.  My grandfather arranged to stay until spring, hoping to find a suitable house and farm to purchase. 

The first day of school in 1939 had a big surprise for my mother and her brothers and sister.  The other children immediately began to ask where they were moving and when.  My grandparents had not told the children about the need to move, I expect they were hoping to have an answer as to where they were going before breaking such news.  There is also the possibility they were required not to speak about it.  Everything about the plant was hush hush.  For years no war records or history books mentioned the plant.  Photo graphs were not allowed although one aerial photo can be found.  My grandparents must not have realized now many people and students would know.  My mother and her siblings were shocked; father would never sell the farm!  When they returned home at the end of the day they discovered the news that they must move but not just yet.

Construction began in a big way!  Construction crews worked through the night.  Soon the fence was erected although armed patrols did not begin right away.  The farm was toward the far end of the compound from where most of the buildings were located.

The land where their little school was on was also expropriated, but it was not enclosed by the fence.  The students however could see it and challenged each other to climb it.  My mother wrote in her essay, Living Behind Barbed Wire, that her brother Norman was able to climb back and forth over it but she never crossed the barbed wire at the top. 

It seems that the Edie family lived a pretty normal life on the little farm yard inside the Cordite plant fence.  They harvested the grain, milked the cows and delivered milk to the dairy.  There was a gate in the fence for them.  The two men that worked for them continued to work for them and live with them.  The children walked to school.  They even thought to go tobogganing on the new hills, oh yes the hills that were bunkers in case of explosions, that`s when the guard shooed them off so I guess that was a step too far.

By spring Father Edie had bought a farm 1 mile away. He had to pay much more than he had received from the government.  Everything was packed up and moved.  They were very sad to move.  However my mother admits the new house was larger and better.  The school was a shorter walk.  Oh it was a different school, the old one having been expropriated.

The Cordite Plant remained busy and active and secretive until May 1945.  Suddenly sweeping layoffs began.  Various plans and thoughts about reusing the site were discussed but in the end it was felt it was too dangerous to reuse buildings that had contained explosives.  Some materials were reused in building projects in Winnipeg. 

Huge cement buildings were blown up.  The towers were toppled into a trench made for the purpose.  Anything that could be burned was burned.  The remains of some of the storage bunkers can be seen near the Transcona Historical Museum.

Eventually the damaged property full of huge holes and giant pieces of cement was put up for sale.  My Grandfather bought 640 acres hoping to use it as pasture land.  I do remember once in my childhood helping my uncles and a lot of cousins walk behind a herd of be cattle, who had been stored there temporarily, as they were being rounded up to shipped.  Even then a full generation later there were pieces of cement sticking out of the ground and we were constantly reminded to watch our step. 

Driving past the site on Hwy 15 you would never know that there had been a huge plant there that ran 24 hours a day for 5 years and you would never guess a little girl and her family lived behind the barbed wire.