Ajax Ontario is located east of Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario. Ajax is considered to be part of the Greater Toronto area and is bordered by the City of Pickering to the West and the Town of Whitby to the East. In 1941 the Canadian Government established a shell-filling plant operated by Defence industries Limited. The community was named for H.M.S. Ajax, the British cruiser which, with H.M.S. Exeter and H.M.S Achilles, defeated the German pocket battleship "Graf Spee" in December, 1939, at the Battle of the River Plate. After the Second World War Ajax became a temporary campus for the University of Toronto for the thousands of returning veterans who enrolled in engineering programs. Ajax was incorporated as a town in 1954.
