Ajax (Ontario)

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Ajax
Ajax ON.JPG
Location in Ontario
Ajax (Ontario)
Ajax
Ajax
State : CanadaCanada Canada
Province : Ontario
Regional Municipality : Durham
Coordinates : 43 ° 51 ′  N , 79 ° 2 ′  W Coordinates: 43 ° 51 ′  N , 79 ° 2 ′  W
Area : 67.09 km²
Residents : 109,600 (as of 2011)
Population density : 1,633.6 inhabitants / km²
Time zone : Eastern Time ( UTC − 5 )
Postal code : L1S, L1T, L1Z
Mayor : Steve Parish
Website : www.ajax.ca

Ajax [ ˈeɪ̯dʒæks ] is a city on Lake Ontario in the province of Ontario , Canada , about 37 km northeast of Toronto , with about 109,600 inhabitants (as of 2011). It is located in the Golden Horseshoe , the central industrial region of Canada.

Ajax is part of the Toronto area and Durham regional parish . Ajax is bordered by Pickering to the west and Whitby to the east .

history

The first white settlement in Pickering Township, which Ajax belongs to, dates back to the late 18th century.

For 150 years, Pickering Township was shaped by peaceful undulating fields until Canada declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939 . The city of Ajax is mentioned for the first time in 1941, when an armaments factory was established there and a small town emerged around it. Within a few years the armaments company DIL was established here on the shores of Lake Ontario. In its "best" times it employed more than 9,000 people, had 30 miles of rail network and 30 miles of road network, employed approx. 600 apprentices ( trainees ) and its water and Sewing works upgraded. The entire area of ​​the DIL armaments plant comprised around 2985 acres of land. People came from all over Canada to work at DIL.

The thriving community got its name from the British warships HMS Ajax , HMS Exeter and HMNZS Achilles . Under the command of Commodore Henry Harwood, these ships brought the German warship Admiral Graf Spee on the Río de la Plata in Uruguay near the port of Montevideo in South America to the fact that the commander ordered the self- sinking in December 1939 .

Ajax was chosen as the name for this wartime community. When the young war veterans stormed to the universities after the end of the Second World War, a branch of the University of Toronto with laboratories, seminar rooms and student dormitories was built in the decommissioned DIL buildings. Ajax also survived the renewed structural change after the closure of the university facilities in 1949, and on December 13, 1954, the first elections for an independent city council took place in Ajax. Before the closure, more than 7,000 students had learned their basic skills here.

After the university was closed, it was necessary to promote the growth of the city according to the visions of George W. Finley of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and so Ajax became a well-planned modern community that used the aftermath of the chaos of war to rebuild .

From 1941 to 1950 Ajax did not have its own local council and was part of Pickering. In 1950, after the citizens of the city filed a petition, Ajax was awarded the Corporation of the Improvement District of Ajax with three trustees as administrators, selected by the deputy governor on the council, following a ruling by the Ontario Municipal Board.

The first trustees were: Benjamin de Forest Bayly as chairman; John Mills as Vice Chairman and WW Rideout. These trustees worked as council member, head boy, library board, and any other office the city could not fill. The chairman had all the rights and duties of a mayor. It was the job of these men to disable the first (by-laws) of Ajax and to consolidate the first local government.

Two key figures hired by the Trustees were Bolton C. Falby, Clerk-Treasurer and Charles H. Reed, Works Superintendent.

In 1953 the desire for full and active participation by the residents of the city in an elected office and education office was very high. The Ajax Citizens' Association, founded by many civilians, gave the city council the task of declaring the embellished part of Ajax to be the city center. This demand was checked and on December 13, 1954 the people were allowed to elect the first mayor and the first school principal.

On June 22, 1973, the village of Pickering and parts of the Township of Pickering were incorporated into the city of Ajax, a five-fold increase in area, so that the new parish now comprises 16,729 acres (68 km²). Since the closure of DIL (1945) and Toronto University Ajax (1949), numerous industrial companies have settled in Ajax, for example Dowty Aerospace, Volkswagen Canada, Chrysler Canada, DuPont, Paintplas, Ajax Textile, AEG Bayly Engineering and others.

Standard of living

Like almost all urban suburbs in the Greater Toronto Area, Ajax has grown steadily since the 1980s. What was once a small place surrounded by agricultural fields has increasingly developed into a dormitory city for Toronto and its surroundings. Many residents live here and commute to work in Toronto or other places in the Durham area every day. The following list shows the sum of the main changes over the past decades:

  • Large population growth leads to widespread growth in the suburbs. As the city grew, it increasingly tried to attract investors, mainly in the downtown area near Harwood Street in North Bayly, this was pushed. Growth in Ajax is only possible because of single-family houses on individual plots, so that the fundamental level (fundamental nature) of the city seems to be fixed for the near future.
  • Increasing traffic density, caused by the proximity to Highway 401, which runs through Durham, connected to other parts of the Transportation Network (GTA), as well as limited travel options on the main roads such as Taunton Road and Rossland Road. Long-term plans, including the expansion of Regional Roads and Highway 401 which extends Highway 407, and increased tourist traffic through the Durham area will mitigate this to some extent.
  • Increasing multicultural structures, with many young foreign workers (ethnic professionals) in the newer northern parts, make Ajax a more heterogeneous city than it was before.
  • The increasing crime, including personal crime (personal property crimes) and burglaries (home invasions) show changes in the amount of crime rate (crime patterns) throughout the GTA to.

Industry

From 1945 after DIL closed until 1949 when Dowty Aerospace opened its stores, there was no industrial use in the Ajax area. In 1991 Volkswagen Canada, DuPont, Paintplas, Ajax Textile, AEG Bayly Engineering and many other companies became Ajax's main employers.

It was not until 1970 that what was not possible after 1945 became possible: shopping centers such as Ajax Plaza, Haarwood Place Mall and Clover Ridge Plaza were built. There was a big boom in the 1980s, creating malls like Discovery Bay Plaza, Transit Square, Baywood Plaza, Westney Heights Plaza, and the recently built Durham Centers on Harwood Avenue and Kingston Road.

The 1970s marked the beginning of many major changes in the Ajax cityscape. New buildings were built on the vacant lots in the middle of Ajax. In the early 1980s, the city grew rapidly at the southern end and large, high-quality row houses were built along the Lake Driveway. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Ajax skyline changed due to the extensive construction of high-rise buildings.

The recession of the 1980s did not stop the population of Ajax from rising. Westney Heights started a project north of Highway 2 and offered people who wanted to build their own home favorable terms for loans, while the usual loan interest rates were 18% to 20%. The increase north of Highway 2 stretched from Church Street in Pickering Village to Harwood Avenue, from Millers Creek on the south of the highway down to the junction of Highway 401.

To provide the necessary protection from fire, a new fire station and fire station was built on Centennial Road and Monarch Avenue in the 1970s, and another fire station on Highway 2 and Westney Road in the mid-1980s.

Ajax and Pickering General Hospital opened its doors in 1954 with 38 beds. It was increased to 50 beds in 1958 and a further expansion to 127 beds was completed in 1964. Emergency care and outpatient care were expanded in 1975. The large growth in the number of inhabitants required a further increase in the size of the city. Approval for further enlargement was granted in autumn 1990. In 1999 the city hospital merged with the Centenary Health Center in Scarborough to join the Rouge Valley Health System, but some departments were closed after financial difficulties.

sons and daughters of the town

Individual evidence

  1. Statistics Canada - Census Ajax 2011