Description
Object description
One album covering the Energite Explosives Company Ltd of Montreal, Shell Loading Plant, Renfrew, Ontario. The album includes formal portrait photographs of the directors; M J O'Brien (Honorary President), Louis A Gosselin KC (President), J A O'Brien (Vice President), Lionel Kent (Managing Director), Louis P Goyette (Secretary/Treasurer), Julien Brisebois (Director), general views inside and outside the plant including the an external view of the office building, internal views of the offices of the director, superintendant, accountant, Imperial Munitions Board, chief examiner, and the general office, the staff quarters, staff bedroom, commissary stores, kitchen, employees dining room and staff dining room, employees dormatories, stores, firing floor in one of the boiler rooms, emergency power unit, carpenter and machine repair shops, assembling room, one of the store houses for complete rounds, cordite magazine (capacity 500,000), and the black powder magazine (capacity 100,000 pounds). The collection also includes photographs of the processes such as cap manufacture; (drawing copper, mixing detonating compound, loading and pressing caps); loading primers (inspecting anvils and plugs, painting caps, setting and inspecting caps in primers, inserting pea balls, cementing paper discs over plugs, charging primers with powder, painting discs, crimping, waterproofing, and inspecting primers, stamping primers with government acceptance mark); working with cordite (weighing charges, bundling, coring and cutting, reweighing charges); general assembly operations (inspectin time fuses, painting loading band on shells, cleaning cartridge cases, loading shrapnel chells with bursting charge, gauging powder charge in shrapnel shells, stenciling cartridges and attaching safety clips, attaching fuses, stencilling boxes, packing rounds, weighing, labelling, and shipping boxes. Also enclosed are two panoramas one of the staff and employees of the plant in front of a building and the other of the plant works.
Historic note printed in the front of the album:
'The Energite Explosives Company Limited was incorporated under Dominion Charter in 1909. Engaged and continued in the manufacture of High Explosives at Plants No. 1 (Haileybury, Ont.) and No 2 (Widdifield, Ont.) until December, 1914, Head Office, Montreal.
Erection of PLANT No. 3, at Renfrew, Ont., was commenced in December, 1915, and completed in March, 1916, at a cost of more than a quarter of a million dollars.
Loading and Assembling operations on 18-pounder British Shrapnel Shells were begun in March, 1916, and with 800 odd employees, male and female, approximately eight million completed rounds of ammunition had been delivered to the Imperial Munitions Board for shipment overseas, up to November, 1917. The loading capacity of this plant is over double this quantity,
During this 21 month period, 250,000 tons of material were handled, of which 7,000 tons were High Explosives. 9,000 freight cars were required to handle this tonnage.
No fire has ever occurred at this Plant, and only one minor accident to employees.
The operations performed, as variously illustrated herein, are: Drawing and loading of copper detonating primer cap. Assembling and loading Mark II. primer. Loading of black powder bursting charge into shrapnel shells. Weighing and loading of smokeless powder (Nitro-Cellulose). Weighing, cutting and bundling of cordite. Assembling and fixing of loading parts. Fuzing of assembled rounds. Stencilling, labelling and packing the completed ammunition into cases for shipment.
The Plant closed down in November, 1917, and has since been idle, loading operations having been discontinued in Canada, but the same is kept in tact and at the disposal of the Government, for its purposes during the continuance of the War.'