Research Road Redux
Elevation view of south facade, 20 Research Road, 2017.
During the Second World War, my mother, Louise MacCallum, was among the 7,500 employees of Research Enterprises Limited (REL), a top-secret government-owned manufacturing facility in Leaside that produced optical equipment and radar sets for the military.
Women made up half the workforce at REL. My mother remembered being paid $15 a week for assembly line work, which was below the average wage for women employed in war industries. The plant functioned on a two-shift schedule, each shift initially 60 hours per week, but later reduced to 45 hours.
An REL employee tests artillery gunsights in the summer of 1943. From Wikipedia.