New Zealanders at the waterfront (spring 1946)
R-L: Arthur Allan. Mr. and Mrs. Manssen and finally, Gordon Fergusson
The name Ernest Rutherford immediately springs to mind when the words “nuclear” and “New Zealand”, are used in a Canadian context. Rutherford, a New Zealander who came to McGill University in 1898 and, over the next nine years, did much of the world-leading research and theory on the structure of the nucleus, has often been claimed as Canada’s first nuclear physicist. Rutherford won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances”, all work performed in Canada.
However, we have recently come to appreciate that there were more New Zealanders who played a role in Canada’s early nuclear efforts.
The Society for the Preservation of Canada’s Nuclear Heritage Inc. (SPCNHI) recently received an email from Mary Allan of New Zealand. She wrote that her father, Arnold Howard Allan, had played a role in the development of Canada’s first reactor ZEEP (the first to operate outside the USA) and wondered what details we could provide about his stay in Canada. A check of a document in the Society’s holdings from the days of the Montreal Lab shows that A.H. Allan joined the roster of Tube Alloys (the cover name for the top-secret project) on March 31, 1945, at a grand salary of 400 UK pounds per annum.
The document also revealed that there were several other New Zealanders on the Tube Alloys pay roll, including Charles Watson-Monro, who was second-in-command of the ZEEP project and responsible for the controls for the ZEEP reactor.
An extended series of emails between the Society and Mary Allan, as well as her sister, Barbie Mathieson, has led to further ties between the Society and the Allan family. Both ladies have searched through family albums and donated a number of photographs of life in Deep River in 1945-46 and sights around the Ottawa Valley. They have also become members of the Society.
We have been able to pinpoint the Allan family home in Deep River as 9 Summit Ave and are working our way through identifying personnel and the locations of other scenes shown in the photographs. One of the photographs shows earth being spread over the sand near the homes on Summit Ave by what appears to be a combination of local workers and prisoners-of-war.
Other New Zealanders at Chalk River during the 1944-1947 era were Gordon J. Fergusson and the Manssen family (first names not yet determined).
In early February a USB “memory stick” with an episode of the New Zealand program “60 Minutes”, filmed in 1995, finally arrived in Deep River. It was mailed by Barbie Mathieson one month earlier. In the video both Arnold Allan and Gordon Ferguson describe their involvement in both the Chalk River U.K. nuclear programs. A very welcome addition to our video collection!
Arnold Allan in front of the Allan home at 9 Summit (1946)
