Kingston Shipyards Injuries, 1942-43

There it was, tucked out of sight in the very last file in one of five boxes in the Queen's University Archives' Kingston Shipyards Collection. I found this tiny, well-worn notebook stamped 'Kingston Shipbuilding Co. Limited' on the back cover, and handwritten 'Compensation Records 25/3/42-18/6/43" on its front cover. It contained handwritten notes on each injury sustained by a worker at the shipyards, during the busy wartime period of naval trawler and corvette construction here.

The write-up of each incident included the worker's name, age and home address, date and time of the incident, and a short description of the incident. Sometimes there are mentions of layoff, return to work and other coded notes that aren't explained.

What I found most amazing was the rate of injury - averaging three per day! Also the ages (14 to 72 years) and the spectrum of positions of the injured workers. Though clerks and foremen were sometimes mentioned, the vast majority were listed as caulkers, plate-hangers, chippers, bolter-ups [bolters-up?], burners, slingers, drillers, stage-builders, cleaner-ups and those directly involved in rivetting: heaters, holder-ons, and passers. Forged rivets (of cyndrical construction with a length depending on the thickness of the steel to be rivetted together, capped by a 'factory head') were heated in small forges to approximately 1000 degrees Celsius, bright cherry-red, then passed/thrown into a conical bucket, from which they were taken with tongs and inserted into holes drilled into the sheet steel. The unformed end of the rivet was hammered to close the joint. As the rivet cooled, it contracted and squeezed the joint together tightly.

By modern standards, this rate of workplace injury would probably be scandalous, resulting in a Ministry of Labour investigation, continuous-improvement implementation and much red tape. Some workers had more than one incident within the span of this notebook's dates. There are mentions of goggles being worn, yet there is a high rate of eye injuries. I don't know how seriously injury prevention and industrial workplace safety was taken during wartime, beyond the recording of the incidents. Lost-time would be even more acute while skilled labour was at a premium, and the urgency of shipbuilding was paramount.

I didn't count the number of incidents recorded in this one notebook, but there were hundreds! I've transcribed a few as-written to include in this post. The majority of injuries were welders' flashes to eyes, slips and falls, wood splinters, finger lacerations, stepping into manholes, reaming and rivetting injuries, and crush injuries while manoeuvering heavy steel shapes and sheets above and below deck. These give us a glimpse into the wartime world of Kingston heavy industry!

Billy Bois 14 - Passer - 367 Montreal St

15/4/42 3:00 p.m.

As he was catching hot rivets, one hit bucket and glanced hit on chin causing burn. Sent to Dr J. Campbell

Frank Stephenson 15 - Passer - 190 Rideau St

1/5/42 8:30 a.m.

He was catching rivets and was about to pass it to riveter and fell in a manhole injuring his left side. Dr Campbell

Russell Woodcock 19 - Holder-On - 458 Barrie St

5/6/42 8:00 a.m.

He was bolting frames on boat and a piece of rust fell off ceiling in left eye. Dr Carp.

Bob Carron 16 - Passer Boy -  268 Wellington St

8/6/42 3:45 p.m.

He was passing rivets a chip of hot slag from welder flew into his left eye. Dr Carp.

Bill Bois 14 - Rivet Passer - 412 Montreal St

10/6/42 12:00 a.m.

He was passing rivets and scale off rivet flew into his right eye. Dr F. Rutherford.

Raymond Kotowych 20 - Welder - 41 Hickson Ave

25/7/42 3:00 p.m.

He was welding and reamers working above him steel fell down into glove and worked into his right arm. Dr Campbell.

Gerald Stevenson 15 - Passer - Sydenham

31/8/42 8:00 a.m.

He was catching rivets on boat, a hot rivet bounced out of bucket fell into his glove causing burn on right hand. Reported as above. Dr Morrison.

Wm Geoghengan 72 - Foreman - 69 Colborne St

3/11/42 6:30 a.m.

He was walking to powerhouse and tripped over cable falling causing injury to ribs on left side. Dr Campbell.

Lyle Hannah - 28 - Slinger - Cataraqui

29/11/42 10:00 a.m.

He was putting angle iron on slings in flat car the sling slipped causing angle iron to fall on his left foot. Dr Campbell.

Robert Hewitt - 42 - Riveter - 160A Bagot St

2/1/43 1:30 p.m.

While he was riveting passer boy missed bucket with rivet and hit him on nose. Laceration. Dr Regan.

UPDATE: Bill Godkin kindly sent along this additional information regarding rivetting:

It took a small agile man or boy to travel through the tanks passing rivets. In the tanks between the hull and floor of the hold there were walls going from side to side. They had openings in them so you could get from one end of the ship to the other. The [furnace] for heating the rivets would be located beside a manhole in one of the holds.  The hot rivet was dropped down through the manhole to the passer below. He turned, and using his tongs, picked the rivet out of the cone shaped bucket and tossed it to the guy hanging through the opening in the next bulkhead until it reached the passer at the seam being repaired. That passer placed the rivet into the hole in the seam and the holder then rammed it home with the holding tool. The holding tool was a solid block of steel about3 by 5 by 5 [shade smaller then that] with a handle on it about 16" long ending in a big circle so he could grab it with two hands and put all of his strength on it so the riveter could flatten it on the outside of the hull.

Bill also sent more information about repairing rivets on a ship in drydock:

A ship was brought into the dry dock, and once it was settled on the cradles and the dock pumped dry it underwent an inspection by the government inspector. The ballast tanks, which ran the full length of the ship, were filled with water then pressurized. The inspector went seam by seam inspecting the rivets and if any were leaking.he circled them with yellow crayon. Then the manhole covers were removed, and starting at the front hold a firehose was used to play water up and down the first seam from inside the hold. Once the inspector had finished that seam he would bang on the hull with his hammer and the crew moved to the next seam.. You might be working with hip waders in a foot of water, and don't forget the open manholes, as once in a while someone would step in one. Once the test was complete, the ship is drained and usually it' was the next day that the work began replacing the circled rivets. First, a burner used a cutting torch to burn off the outside flared part of the rivet. Then a man using an air hammer punched out the rest of the rivet. Then the two-man reamer crew reamed out the hole. Once a seam or two are done the rivet crew started replacing the rivets. So you are down in the tanks passing rivets, and they are burning out rivets and punching them out, and reaming them out all around you!

Interview with a 'Wino'

In mid-September, 1967 the Whig ran a five-part series on alcoholism. Each part explored the affliction from a different angle. In the second part, published September 18, reporter Robert Taylor talked to 42 year-old 'Mike J', whom he agreed to meet near Place d'Armes (The Line). I've mentioned before on this blog the connection between the Inner Harbour and 'winos', as they're unromantically referred to in the piece.

The winos had their own wino lingo, one part of which was their favoured consumption sites: The Logs, The Bridge, The Willows, The Point (only the last was identified as being at the rear of the Canadian Army Staff College), and also Bell's Island.

These photos were snapped from a distance, no doubt to keep Mike unaware as he sat on a pile of heavy bridge timbers. The Tete du Pont barracks can be seen in the background, with a patrolling commissionaire. A script-lettered Canadian Pacific gondola car is seen at left.

The above image was closest to the one that actually made it to print. Both men were shown in shadow and the photo was cropped right above reporter Taylor's head. That is the real value of finding these original negatives in the Whig-Standard Fonds of the Queen's University Archives - context! 

Mike mentioned some of his favourites vintages in the piece: wine, beer, rubbing alcohol and vanilla, though he favoured wine for its 'reliability'. Originally from Northern Ontario, via Toronto and London to Kingston, he would spend the summer looking for handouts at the corner of Princess and Wellington for the next purchase, the winter in a cell, and sadly, the only release from alcoholism was death. Seven empty Canadian Brandy bottles line The Line:

A final frame:

 

Wandering Wellington and Walkabout

Today's wandering began at 27 Place d'Armes, formerly the Millard & Lumb building. Heading toward Princess Street along Place d'Armes towards Fort Frontenac, I photographed the plaque with the remnants of the fort and the current Fort Frontenac in the distance. I'll wind up here - and there are a LOT of plaques to be seen!

I walked along the one-lane traffic west of the causeway, along the refurbished Fort Frontenac wall. Some geese paid absolutely no attention as I took their picture from National Defence property, looking east across the Inner Harbour (above). Heading a little north, I photographed the former oil-unloading dock through a chain-link fence (below) adding a 1964 Queen's University Archives inset image of rowboatmen from March, 1964, coincidentally my birth month:

Heading back up Place d'Armes, I noticed Today's Mystery. This cornerstone/milestone at the corner of the former Millard & Lumb building that is inscribed with the letters WD (see arrow above, closeup below) My initial thought was a survey benchmark. The letters are interesting, and indicate War Department, a British Ordnance Survey showing land owned (or formerly owned) by the War Department. There are others at the former (wall remnants) and current Fort Frontenac (northeast corner of Tragically Hip Way and Ontario St) sites.

Walking toward Frontenac Village condominium community, at the end of King Street East,  I was treading on the former Anglin coal yard. Now gentrified and clean, here's a different view of the oil-unloading area:

I couldn't get far enough back to duplicate this archival view of Esso's Imperial Collingwood docked in 1976 without trespassing on condo-land, so the coaldock will have to sit out in Anglin Bay for this image:

Heading up Wellington Street as far as Rideaucrest, I checked in on the Imperial Oil limestone warehouse at the foot of North Street, being renovated by Doornekamp. Nobody was working on the site today.

A south-end view of the former ground-level shed and base of the ramp that served the upper level:

Now in front of the Leeuwarden condominiums, I had a nice view back from whence I'd come, with Frontenac Village now forming the background. The end of Wellington Street and MetalCraft Marine are in the foreground, with one jogger just how liveable Kingston is!

A little farther toward the Leeuwarden entrance shows the dry-dock, watered-up but unoccupied:

Who can wander past the Bajus Brewery and not make a photograph or two?

That keg! That balcony! Wellington, oh Wellington, wherefore art thou, Wellington?

Trying to place the former CN Freight shed, I went one block beyond Place d'Armes. Regardless, with Barrack Street in the background, here's the 1951 flooding of Wellington Street in front of the CN freight shed:

Parking lots can also be wandered through, and I reached Queen and Ontario where the 'GAS the MODERN FUEL' lettering is just visible on the water side of the former PUC buildings on Queen:

A grain elevator-top rendition of days of yore is on the front of the Queen Street buildings, nearly eclipsed by chickory:

Install the city's longest streetsign and some passing truck will bend it like a boomerang:

The gate and plaques of Fort Frontenac brought me back to the beginning of my 45-minute walkabout. Another potentially-triggering but not-photographed plaque mentions the Crawford Purchase, made with the indigenous people on Carleton Island in 1783.

 

Scrapyards of Kingston

Scrapyards - now there's a topic that I'll bet rarely makes it to the docket of the Kingston Historical Society! But there's money (and history) in scrap - one man's junk and all that...

I'm in the process of relocating my HO scale scrapyard. Now, more spacious! With a longer rail spur! So I'm taking full advantage of archival photos. Indeed, large swaths of the near-north end of Kingston were occupied by scrapyards and still are. Though we often think of scrapyards as 'the graveyards of the rusted automobiles' of Arlo Guthrie's telling, there's been a rebirth in steel and other metals used as re-melt. KIMCO and other auto scrapyards located along McAdoo's Lane do a brisk business.

COHEN

Arriving in Kingston from Lithuania in 1898, Isaac Cohen began his scrap business on Princess Street in 1899 in partnership with a Max Susman. Their Kingston Rag & Metal Co. buildings were reached via a passageway beside Oberndorffer’s cigar factory on Ontario Street. The largest dealer in scrap metal between Toronto and Montreal, its warehouses were situated close to the docks for shipping by water or by railway. Eventually moving to the rambling property on the west side of Montreal Street, south of present-day Railway Street, variously listed as 606 Montreal Street (1923), 540 (1941) and 594 (1943) per city directories. The site is currently listed by the city as a contaminated brownfield site..

Results of extinguishing a fire in the Cohen scrapyard (battery recycling) site on February 2, 1968.

Wider shots of the scrapyard listed as 594 Montreal Street, part of a City of Kingston planning report:

This may have been the Cohen scrapyard:

Steel and scrap were inseparable. A 1967 Cohen ad:

Imagery from the city's Kmaps website shows the transition from scrap metal to steel sales between 1953 and 1978.

KIMCO

Hyman Rosen arrived with his family from Lithuania in 1911. An early scrap operation (formerly occupied by Oberndorffer/McGowan's Cigar manufacturers) became Rosen Coal Supply in 1937 on Rideau Street. A 1920 newspaper ad:

That site would become Kingston Scrap Iron Metal Company, though a city park and tennis courts now occupy the site. Later relocated to Counter Street in 1975 as the burgeoning KIMCO (Kingston Iron & Metal Company) operation under president Irving Rosen in 1976, joined by Gregg Rosen in 1979. Gregg was killed in a boating accident in September, 2023. Irving continued with the scrap business, while Hyman's son Harry concentrated on the fuel business. The gates and 1965 streetview of Rosen's at 140 Rideau Street:

Two photos from Stones Kingston (above and below).

KIMCO bought the assets of I. Cohen & Co. of 594 Montreal St. in December, 1991. At that time, Cohen's property south of Railway Street was 3 acres and the president was H.A. Cohen. A Whig ad marking the opening of the Kingston Shopping Centre in November, 1971 mentions KIMCO but includes the older logo:

Similar versions of this Kingston Iron & Metal ad ran from the late 1960's to the mid-1970's:

Another ad from September, 1982:

In latter years, Harold's Demolition scrapyard was even set up mere feet from the entrance to the Woolen Mill!

(Unless otherwise indicated, photos in this post from Queen's University Archives)

'Pollution' on Kingston's Waterfront

No, I'm not talking environmental awareness here, I'm talking modern art! 'Pollution' by artist Yvon Cozic. Installed from artist's plans by Foley Construction, a 40x50 foot plot was cleared in early June, 1974 and installation complete in July, across King Street from Kingston General Hospital. Two lime green eight-foot diameter sewer pipes spewing forth multicoloured effluent, the sculpture was a gift from Quebec government valued at $50,000. One of three public art works along the waterfront: Pollution, Time from the Ontario government by Kosso Elou, and another by Ted Bieler from the federal government along the Portsmouth Harbour breakwater, all installed to mark the city's tercentenary. A 25-foot gift  many Kingstonians wish they could return. However, the city parks, recreation and property committee had already voted 4-3 to receive it on November 28, 1973. 

In September, 1974 someone lit a mattress on fire in one of the pipes. Creatively repainted as 7-Up and Coke cans on November 5, 1975, police were called but did not stop the painting. Charged on November 20, 1975 and fined $50 each in January, 1976 were research physiologist Frazer Baker, biochemist Michael Paul and physician Ronald Baker, identified as KGH employees! Their handiwork, which took three weeks to prepare as stencils, was painted over by some other citizens a few days later, then officially by the city's Parks Department in April, 1976 (Whig photo, above) at a cost of their $150 total fines. They got off lucky - the maximum fine that could have been levied by Judge P.E.D. Baker was $1,000 for defacing public property!

An unofficial poll in the Whig found that 140 interviewees wanted the pop can colours kept, 30 wanted it returned to its original colours, an 10 wanted it removed! One columnist in 1974 suggested that the sculpture would be better-suited to emplacement at the former Belle Park dump, thereby reminding us of the more positive implications of its theme. Belle Park was actually the preferred site by the city committee, with the final site fifth as well as being the second choice of the sculptor, who preferred City Park.

The Whig's Jack Chiang creatively framed a laker heading downbound on November 24, 1977 (above).

Kingston Shipyards' R.W. Sutton

R. W. (Bob) Sutton was the General Manager of the Kingston Shipyards - pictured at the Kingston Shipyards with Mr Gilmore, naval architect and partner in German & Milne Naval Architects (top photo, undated). Born in Toronto in 1909, after beginning his marine career as an oiler on the S.S. Turret Court of the Tree Line Navigation Co. during the 1928 shipping season, advancing to Chief Engineer on the S.S. Ashbay into 1930, then the Dufferin Shipbuilding Co. and proceeding into marine engineering, earning his Stationary Engineer certificate in 1942: 

Beginning his career with Canada Steamship Lines at Collingwood in 1944, he was in charge of new construction before becoming General Superintendent. He then transferred to Port Arthur Shipbuilding Company in 1949 as General Superintendent there. 

He was sent to Kingston in 1953 to be the new general manager. Previous manager T.G. Bishop retired at the age of 73. Even at that time, Mr Sutton was advocating for an enlargement of the operation by purchasing land to the west enabling the workers to take on larger projects with less congestion overall. An aerial view of the Kingston Shipyards, taken by prolific local photographer Wallace Berry at the time of the launching of the lightship Cataraqui in September, 1959:

Mr Sutton became one of the city’s prominent community leaders. His energy and friendliness extended beyond the shipyard, to Kingston itself. Serving on the Public Utilities Commission from 1958 to 1966, including three years as Chairman beginning in 1960. As such, his signature appeared on Kingston Public Transit System bus tickets which took over from Colonial Coach Lines in 1962.

With the Seaway completed, Sutton continued to seek out things for the Kingston Shipyards to do, determined to keep them open. He repaired ships and modified the hulls of existing lake vessels. He hoped to build plastic boats with few employees and inexpensive equipment. Sutton’s hopeless struggle to keep the yard open and earnings was futile. A plan to extend the dry dock 200 feet to accommodate larger lake vessels would have cost nearly $2 million. At the time, total annual payroll approached $700,000 and 150 were employed, though the payroll had been two-an-a-half times higher just ten years prior. Despite believing there was a bright future for the Kingston Shipyards upon his arrival just 15 years earlier, it closed in October, 1968. Ordered razed, two buildings survived the 1973 demolition to become the home of the Marine Museum of the Great Lakes.

Returning to Thunder Bay as General Manager on June 1, 1968 then Vice-President of Canadian Shipbuilding & Engineering in 1972, before retiring in 1974 and returning to the Kingston area to build a home on the south shore of Hay Bay. He lived there until turning 100, living into his 102nd year.

AUGUST 2026 UPDATE: I had a friendly email from Jim Barrie with his memories of Mr Sutton, or as he knew him simply, Bob:

We were close friends and neighbours for 25 years. Bob kept his papers by his easy chair and frequently had a story and photo to remember his life’s work. Our last visit to the marine museum was 2010. I introduced Bob to a gentleman working on repairs to the north end of the dry dock. Bob explained to the man he had to blow up the end of the dry dock with dynamite to accommodate a larger ship. Bob was born in England, his father died in WWI, and his mother in the ensuing flu epidemic. Bob, his brother and sister were sent to Toronto by the Barnardo Home Child program. Bob ended up north of Toronto in a barn, the back of a home, cutting railroad ties and pulpwood, till he was of age to reunite with his siblings.                                                     

The bulk of Bob's estate was put into the Sutton Trust by the Kingston Foundation. The trust supports the Kingston Boys and Girls Club and the Shrine Children’s Hospital in Montreal.

(Photos and artifacts in this post from the RW Sutton Fonds, Queen's University Archives)