Phil Egan, special to The Sarnia Journal

Sixty-five years later, Howard Longley still remembers the trucks.

Sitting on his tricycle at the age of five, he would watch them come and go from a little machine shop on Margaret Street.

But there was something unusual about these trucks. Unlike most of the vehicle Howard liked to watch coming and going, the ones that came to Margaret Street had no markings.

That was in 1950. It would be 65 years before Howard, a retired Sarnia firefighter, would discover the reason why.

Last year he purchased a 70-year-old lathe from that same little machine shop on Margaret Street. And Ross Wise, the son of owner George Wise, told him a fascinating story.

At the outbreak of war in 1939 Canada was a nation of 11 million people. The country was quick, however, to convert to a wartime footing. In Ottawa, the impressive C.D. Howe took over the Ministry of Munitions and Supply and was soon firing out contracts for weapons and war material across Canada.

One of those contracts, for Bren gun parts, landed at Sarnia’s Electric Auto-Lite. It had already begun converting to the production of automotive parts for military vehicles. Across town, Mueller Brass was also busy, having converted production to material for Canada’s rapidly expanding navy.

Unable to keep up with Ottawa’s demands for gun parts, Electric Auto-Lite turned to Wise Engineering and Machine Works Limited – the little shop on Margaret Street. George Wise accepted the challenge, and soon had ten men working for him as the shop poured out Bren gun parts for the front lines.

Canada was manufacturing weaponry and munitions for Britain and the United States, as well as for itself.

As demand increased, additional production was ordered, and another ten men joined a second shift on Margaret Street. As the unmarked trucks rushed to the little shop for pick up, Howard Longley would watch them come and go.

It would be the mid-1950s before the Margaret Street munitions shop would end its hectic pace of production. The war had ended in 1945, but the Communist menace kept the need for a weapons stockpile a priority.

The shop eventually closed and its machinery scattered to the winds. But that old battleship-grey lathe sits to this day in Howard Longley’s own machine shop. One of three that came from the Margaret Street shop, Longley is currently refinishing it and looks forward to the day when it will be back in action, this time helping to repair fire trucks and fire equipment.