[Marc Montgomery]

Dean, are you sure about it being the biggest? Camp Bouchard in Blainville (about 20 min from my house) was several km sq in area. Its now a major equestrian area, lots of housing (of course) and the site of an automaker test track (closed to public) which you can easily see on google earth. When I was there several years ago, you could still find in the wooded areas remnants of foundations and some of the small calibre filling stations.. These were rows of three sided concrete cubicles..so that if one blew..it would up and back through the wood roof and rear but not forward into the building or beside into the other cubicles. (a blast wall would be outside building-see photo) I have somewhere in my collection “then and now” photos..but these are not available to me at present (were they in a Convoy Mag??)

In walking the still wooded areas (again several years ago) you would come across other vestiges of the past including for example fire hydrants in the middle of the woods..

There was daily train service for the thousands of workers to and from..and of course other train tracks into the plant itslef to transport the vast amount of munitions…train evidence all gone now. And the plant even had its own bus service.

The other major plant was Cherrier, now Le Gardeur..also about 20 min from my house in the other direction, but I’ve never been there. Its now all new boring soulless suburb. I doubt anyone there knows anything at all about the plant/war effort there. Probably any evidence of its existence is long gone.

Quite some time ago I somehow came across medical reports (online somewhere) about worker health.. Seems after awhile, it was discovered that many workers began to suffer from TNT poisoning in spite of precautions of mandatory showers, washing of work clothes etc.. (this was also the case in WWI) I seem to recall that they began to limit the time workers spent directly with the explosives to a period of several months before switching to other functions

**(veterans affairs website) ***= For example, Quebec, one of the main suppliers of arms to the Allied forces, alone provided up to one third of the country's civilian workforce, earning it the name of Canada's Arsenal! Quebec had the country's two tank factories, five main shipyards, two of the four largest gun manufacturing plants, practically all the plants producing small calibre ammunition, ten plants manufacturing shells, the only plant producing air bombs, almost half the explosives and chemical factories, and three out of eight aircraft plants. The armament plants were literally industrial cities. The largest, Defence Industries Limited's Cherrier plant, located in Saint-Paul-L'Ermite (today known as Le Gardeur, just outside of Montréal), alone had 450 buildings spread over 15 square kilometres! ****


Also in one of the old Convoy Magazines, there is a big story on the Angus Yards tank plant in Montreal. Lots of then and now photos. Mostly housing development now. Part of the main plant is now a big supermarket, another part is converted into office space


Bouchard and Cherrier photos
1- Blast wall outside a shell filling building
2- Inspection window into one of the filling cubicles ( I have a fragment of the triple layer armoured glass window)

3- Filling a torpedo warhead
4- One of the filling cubicles mentioned
5- Stencilling 25pdr shells