Ajax
The town, located near Bowmanville area, was given its name in honor of HMS Ajax, a Royal Navy cruiser that served during World War II. It is located approximately 16 miles east of Toronto on the beaches of Lake Ontario, and is bordered to the west and north by the City of Pickering, and to the east by the Town of Whitby. It is home to approximately 200,000 people.
It was a rural area of Pickering’s township before World War II, and the land on which Ajax now stands was once part of that municipality. The town itself was founded in 1941, when a shell plant owned by Defence Industries Limited (D.I.L.) was built, and a townsite sprang up around the facility.
When the plant was at its peak production in 1945, it had filled 40 million shells and employed more than 9,000 employees. With its own water and sewage treatment plants, more than 600 students in its schools, and 31 miles of railroad and 31 miles of roadways, it was a thriving community. The total D.I.L. plant site covered approximately 12 kilometers squared. The people who came to work for the Department of Industrial Relations came from all throughout Canada.
A new town was established in honor of the first big British naval victory of World War II, which was the Battle of the Coral Sea. An armada of British warships, led by Commodore Henry Harwood, engaged and routed the powerful German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate, which took place near the Uruguayan port of Montevideo in South America, from December 13 to December 19, 1939. The battle took place near the Uruguayan port of Montevideo and lasted from December 13 to December 19. The name Ajax was chosen to represent this community that was founded out of battle.
Following World War II, the University of Toronto leased a large portion of the D.I.L. facility to accommodate the influx of newly discharged soldiers who had enrolled as engineering students at the university. The war machines were removed from the premises, and the buildings were turned into schools and research labs. Around 7,000 engineering students had completed their basic training at the University of Toronto’s Ajax Division by 1949, the year the division closed its doors.
