Scarborough ceremony on June 6 to honour Bomb Girls who worked at GECO munitions factory in Second World War
By SEAN SANDIESON
Scarborough will be honouring the Bomb Girls who worked in local munitions factories during the Second World War at a ceremony set for June 6 — the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
The ceremony will take place at Hangar, Wing F, Ashtonbee Campus of Centennial College from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The campus is located at 75 Ashtonbee Rd., near Warden and Eglinton avenues.
The non-profit Bomb Girls Legacy Foundation will host the ceremony that will include local dignitaries, community members, and surviving Bomb Girls to launch the Eglington Ave Banner Campaign.
The campaign will see nearly three dozen unique banners set up along poles from Pharmacy to Warden avenue to commemorate Scarborough’s Bomb Girls.
Each banner will depict a scene from the General Engineering Company Canada or GECO’s factory just southwest of Eglington and Warden. The sprawling factory site employed more than 21,000 Canadians filling munitions to support Canada’s armed forces during the Second World War. The majority of those workers were local women, and they became known as the Bomb Girls.
The Bomb Girls Legacy Foundation was created to honour Canada’s wartime workers by promoting remembrance, raising community awareness about their contribution to the military effort, and starting the conversation about the important work and legacy imbued by women on the home front during the Second World War.
“We honour the men and women who, through their labours, helped win the war. Particularly, we remember the tens of thousands who worked at GECO and Defense Industries Limited war plants in Scarborough and Pickering, and the more than one million women across Canada who left an enduring legacy worthy of national pride and recognition,.” said Barbara Dickson, author and chair of the foundation, about Thursday ceremony.
At the event will be an antique car show provided by the Historical Automobile Society of Canada, 1940s music performed by jazz band Swing Junkies, historic wartime artifacts presented by the Archives of Ontario and the Ontario Regiment RCAC Museum, a screening of Bomb Girls: A Documentary, a theatrical performance by the Scarborough Theatre Guild, Vintage Inn’s women in period costume, and presentations of commemorative scrolls to surviving Bomb Girl families.
For more information on the legacy of Scarborough’s Bomb Girls, please visit https://www.barbaradickson.ca/bomb-girls-legacy/
For more on the Bomb Girls, please see our earlier Beach Metro Community News story at https://beachmetro.com/2017/11/15/bomb-girls-risked-lives-cause/
