While some Waterloo Region communities considered expanding into wartime munitions production, they were certainly not alone in attempting to take advantage of wartime demand. Munitions factories across the country were busy producing shells for the British war effort. Levels of production were so high that, by early July, the Canadian Militia Department was faced with a surplus of some one million shells. Most factories had been producing incomplete shells which lacked vital components such as cordite, primers, and fuses. These components were manufactured much more slowly than the shells themselves, leading to the massive surplus..
As a result, the Department of Militia announced an immediate but temporary halt on all government shell orders, until production of other component parts, or complete “fixed” ammunition caught up. Such a halt in orders may have affected on-going attempts to bring munitions factories to Waterloo Region communities such as Ayr and Guelph as well as existing munitions productions elsewhere in the region.
(“No Shell Orders for Canadian Factories for the Present,” Berlin Daily Telegraph, 12 July 1915.)
