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FACTORIES COME TO LEASIDE

THE PROVISION of low-cost, dependable hydro power to industrial communities created the impetus needed for the growth and development of manufacturing in Ontario. Many businessmen recognized the great opportunities inherent in this upsurge of industrial life and hastened to take advantage of this unique situation.

It was in 1913, when the Town was incorporated, that Leaside changed from being a strictly agricultural area. The genesis of its subsequent remarkable industrial development was on the horizon. That same year, under the guiding genius of H. H. Horsfall, the Canada Wire and Cable Company recognized, from an industrial perspective, the undisputed advantages being offered by Leaside. This Canada Wire and Cable executive had sixty homes built in the town shortly after the war; these formed the nucleus of the present residential district. Once these steps were taken, Leaside was well on its way to municipal stability and prosperity.

The remarkable industrial growth of Leaside and its concomitant residential development can be ascribed to the general stability of the municipality, an inviting site for the economical manufacture and distribution of factory products. It is a safe assumption that the executives of Leaside’s varied industries satisfied themselves by comparing Leaside with other potential locations. It would seem that the superior advantages being offered by this town led them to select Leaside as the site of their respective plants.

CANADA WIRE AND CABLE (CWC)

At the turn of the century, the generating of electricity was very limited in scope, and Ontario’s coal supply, for generations, had been coming primarily from Pennsylvania.¹ However, with three privately-owned hydro generating plants on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, it was believed that hydro power could be produced much less expensively than thermal power.

Canada Wire and Cable office building with plant behind. Date: 1922. Collection of the Bailey family.

By 1941–43, the homes intended for Canada Wire and Cable employees have sprung up on Randolph Road, Sutherland Drive and Airdrie Road. The industrial area is booming. Collection of the Bailey family.

In 1906, the Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario was formed as a public utilities commission by the Province of Ontario, in response to the need for low-cost, dependable hydro power to be supplied to industrial communities. Correspondingly, a tremendous demand developed for both primary and secondary distribution cable needed to carry hydro.

Herbert Horsfall, a superintendent with Dominion Wire Manufacturing in Montreal, was approached by Roderick J. Parke of the Toronto firm, Parke and Leith. Together they met with Emil A. Wallberg, a well-known contractor, asking him for financial backing. In February 1911, the Canada Wire and Cable Company Limited was incorporated with offices at Yonge and Richmond streets. Wallberg became President, Parke the Managing Director and Horsfall was appointed Secretary/ Treasurer.² Their first factory space, owned by the Farmers Feed Company, was located on the banks of the Don River near Richmond Street. The new company also leased a portion of a plant at 1170 Dundas Street West. It was the Canadian General Electric Company who, at that time, supplied Canada Wire with weatherproof wires and rubber covered wires.

Canada Wire and Cable on Laird Drive with water tower. Date: 1922. Collection of the Bailey family of Leaside

In November 1912, on behalf of Canada Wire and Cable, Emil Wallberg purchased sixteen acres in Leaside at the southeast corner of Wicksteed and Laird. He intended to erect a wire and cable factory, as well as build one hundred houses in 1914 to accommodate future employees. These semi-detached houses were to be located on Airdrie, Sutherland and Rumsey and were to be rented at a reasonable rate of approximately $12.00 per month. Some were also available for purchase for $2500.00. Sixty houses were to be built in 1914 and forty more in 1915. However, in 1914, the economic scene was becoming less favourable as international tension mounted. Although the walls of the factory buildings were up in Leaside, the Company suspended this operation and continued to work from the Dundas Street location.

World War I, however, created a new international need. The Directors at Canada Wire and Cable, led by their new President F. J. Bell, recognized an opportunity to utilize the empty Leaside buildings profitably. On June 28, 1916, they incorporated and became owners of the Leaside Munitions Company Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canada Wire and Cable Company Limited. Six-inch shells were produced rapidly and efficiently. The Munitions Board was so pleased by both the lower price (they had formerly paid $35.00 each) and delivery that further contracts were awarded. Near the end of the war, this Leaside plant was the largest producer of this type of ammunition in North America.³

In early 1919, while the premises on Laird were being vacated by the Leaside Munitions Company Limited, a fire occurred at the Dundas Street plant of Canada Wire and Cable, closing down that operation. A decision was made to move the wire and cable business to Leaside. Their newly occupied buildings fronted on Laird Drive, with the office buildings, which had been built in 1918, being the three-storey and one-storey buildings located along Wicksteed Avenue. The other buildings on the south side of the property near Commercial Street, which had also been used by the Munitions Company, were sold to Durant Motors of Canada Limited.

In 1918, a 117 ft. water tower was built by Canada Wire and Cable. Located in the centre of the property close to Laird Drive and just south of the Canada Wire buildings, the tank for the tower was 22 ft. in diameter and 19 ft. high, with a capacity of 75,000 gallons. For years the tower was a Leaside landmark, until its removal in 1956.

The Canada Wire and Cable Company adopted a somewhat paternalistic policy towards the struggling municipality. In November 1918, the company volunteered to pay for the construction of a water main that would run along Soudan Avenue (now Parkhurst) to the Company’s factory site. In return the company wanted to receive a fixed assessment rate. They were granted a fixed assessment of $1500.00 on their 28 acres of land for a period of ten years.

Men “taking a break” at Canada Wire and Cable in Leaside in 1920. The man, second from the left with a patchwork pad on his knee, is Kenneth Farrows. At the time, the salary was $18.00 a week. Courtesy the Farrows’ family.

When a depression hit the economy in 1921, Canada Wire and Cable, in a move to keep its expenditures to a minimum, cut staff salaries by ten percent. “In 1920 they earned about $18.00 per week.”⁴ Despite the difficult times, however, Canada Wire and Cable were exporting to Brazil, New Zealand and Australia during these depression years. In August of 1921, F. J. Bell resigned as President, having served since 1914. Wallberg was elected President for the second time. However, by 1926, business recovered to more promising levels. Sales for that year totalled approximately 2.5 million, bringing them close to the peak year recorded by the company six years earlier. In 1929, Wallberg divested himself of his interests in Canada Wire and Cable and sold his entire holdings to Nesbitt Thomson and Company Limited, a Toronto financial house. This happened just one month before his sudden death on March 30, 1929.

Aerial view showing Laird and McRae Drive in 1922. The airfield is to the left, with Canada Wire and Cable and Durant Motors in the middle. S. Walter Stewart Library, Elmore Gray Collection.

A new building was erected south of the other buildings in 1927 to house the new enamel wire operation. Up to this time, magnetic wires had mostly been insulated with wrappings of cotton or silk. A year later an agreement also was made with Noranda Mines Limited to supply copper for copper rod to Canada Wire and Cable. Sales recorded for 1930 were $7,567,000.00, a drop of approximately 10% from the previous year. Sales continued to drop in the ensuring three years, reaching a low of close to $3,800,000.00 and earnings were recorded in the red. Measures were, once again, taken to reduce overhead through staff layoffs, salary reductions and cost trimming.⁵

In 1933, when the Dominion Motors Company (formerly Durant) ceased manufacturing cars and were selling their buildings and land, Canada Wire and Cable purchased 4.86 acres. The remaining 9.46 acres were sold to Frigidaire Canada Limited (a division of General Motors Corporation) the manufacturers of refrigerators and other appliances. The company moved into the Durant buildings on Commercial Road. Frigidaire remained in Leaside until 1958 when they decided to relocate and offered these buildings to Canada Wire and Cable at a favourable price.

Durant Motors had built an office building in 1928 across the street on the west side of Laird. When they stopped manufacturing cars, they offered it to Canada Wire and Cable for $75,000.00, but Canada Wire management “could not justify such an expenditure for pen pushers, preferring to spend their money for something materially more productive.”⁶

In 1911, the Standard Underground Cable Company of Pittsburgh had established its Canadian subsidiary in Hamilton. By 1927, the stock of the Canadian operation was acquired by Nesbitt Thomson and, two years later, Standard Underground amalgamated with Canada Wire and Cable. The Hamilton plant continued operations until 1934 when the equipment was moved to Leaside and, by 1935, the company had moved into the Durant buildings on the east side of Laird.

As Canada Wire and Cable’s sales and profits increased, new equipment was purchased. A new transformer station was installed in response to the need for greater power. During the Second World War, Canada Wire and Cable supplied aircraft wires, navy cables, degausser cable (for demagnetizing ships) and field telephone wires. As well, antisubmarine nets to protect coastal harbours were manufactured. Although over three hundred employees out of 1,200 personnel enlisted in the Armed Services, the company continued its regular business as well as responding to the war effort. At this time many women entered the workforce.

The remaining years of the 1930s saw a marked recovery in the general economy from the Depression years. By 1940, the company was returned to a state of momentum reminiscent of the late twenties.

With the end of the war in 1945, there was a demand for wire and cable in the building of houses. This boom led to the employment of 2,100 people, almost double their previous number. As a result the Leaside plant was rehabilitated, creating greater efficiency, increased production and improved working conditions.

However, in December of that year, a vote of all qualified hourly-paid employees was held at Leaside for the selection of a collective bargaining agent. As a result, Local 514 was certified and negotiations began. The year 1946 saw a breakdown in negotiations for the first agreement. A strike occurred from July until October 1946, leading to 110 production days being lost to the Leaside plant. Immeasurable sales and earnings were lost.

By 1951, a Wire Drawing Department building was erected on the northeast section of the holdings of CWC that faced Wicksteed Avenue. Expansion was in the air. In 1958, with the acquisition of 9.46 acres of property from Frigidaire, Canada Wire and Cable now owned twenty-five acres in the vicinity of Laird and Eglinton.

The vulcanizing extruder as it looked in 1998, amid the debris of demolition. Leaside Advertiser.

In 1959, the vertical continuous vulcanizing extruder which allowed the rubber around the cable to mold evenly as it was vertically dropped, was installed to improve the quality of large size thermosetting insulated cables. This extruder is still standing on the site although everything else was demolished in 1998. Well into the 1960s, Canada Wire and Cable was continuing to expand across Canada, leading to reorganization and development during the 1970s, with the updating of facilities in full process.

The work force reached 2,700 employees by 1978, with annual sales of 100 million. About 1991, Canada Wire and Cables property was purchased by Alcatel, a European firm. The property was sold when Alcatel moved from Leaside to Markham in 1996. The site was purchased the following year by Mitchell Goldhar and will be developed into box stores and a shopping mall. At the time of publication, the former buildings had been demolished and the slow process of clearing and decommissioning the soil has begun. Construction of the stores is slated for Spring 2000.

When the Canada Wire and Cable plant in Leaside was slated to be torn down, Alcatel, the owners, decided to let the people at the Todmorden Mills Museum remove whatever they wanted from the Canada Wire Archives. What was not taken by the museum was left for the employees working for the company at the time, to have whatever interested them. There was no record of who took what, so much of the Canada Wire memorabilia is now lost.

Ray Dade, a former employee and war veteran, wanted to know what had happened to the Roll of Honour that always hung in a hallway leading to the CWC reception area off Commercial Road. It not only contained his name, but also that of his brother, along with many of his childhood friends who were employees at Canada Wire and who had gone on to join the Services during the Second World War. The Roll contains some 287 names of those men and women. Some are bearing small crosses, signifying that they had made the ultimate sacrifice for King and Country.

After many phone calls, much tracking down of false leads and repeated visits to the almost flattened former building site, Ray came up empty-handed. No one knew who had liberated the Roll of Honour. His detective work finally paid off when, just on a whim, he went in to talk with someone at Branch 10, Todmorden Legion in East York. The search was over. Not only did the legion members know about the Honour Roll – it was hanging on their wall. Evidently, it had been found in a member’s basement. Knowing that someone would think it was important, the individual had dropped it off at the only place he knew. That was at the legion hall.

Ray, along with the Legion President, Roy Gray, and Gene Wazny and others, felt that a formal unveiling ceremony should take place to celebrate the Roll of Honour’s new-found home. This took place Sunday, October 25, 1998 at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 10 on Pape Avenue, Toronto. Many former employees of Canada Wire and Cable and their families were invited to attend this historic event to commemorate the lives of those men and women. The Roll of Honour was presented to the Branch 10 Legion and can be found there today.

THE LEASIDE MUNITIONS COMPANY

The onset of World War I and Britain’s need for shell production caused Canada Wire and Cable to suspend their Leaside operation and continue their production line on Dundas Street. The directors at Canada Wire saw an opportunity for the empty Leaside buildings and, on June 28, 1916, they incorporated to create and own the Leaside Munitions Company Ltd. The Imperial Munitions Board was set up in Ottawa to award contracts. Britain was in desperate need for shells and decided to utilize the industrial potential of its Dominions. The contract was awarded to Leaside in 1916 for the manufacture and assembly of 54,000 shells, all to be 9.2 inches in size. Workers, given bonuses after reaching a certain output level, were spurred on by huge clocks which recorded hourly production. Output was tremendous! Shells were turned out at a rate unheard of up to that time.

View showing the extent of the Leaside Munitions works, taken from a drawing made in late 1918. Originally in The Red Reel, The Story od Canada wire by J. Harry Pryce.

The 6” shells, being produced by Leaside Munitions in 1917, being given final inspection. Originally in The Red Reel, The Story of Canada Wire.

During this period, 4,000 people were employed at the plant. A 10-coach railway train operating every morning from Royce Avenue in the west end of Toronto, followed the CPR North Toronto line to the factory, bringing in the workers at a cost of $75.00 per day for the company. A fleet of buses running between Jackes Avenue and the Laird plant was provided, at no charge, by James Bristow, Albert Mould and George Aldridge. From this service developed the Bristow Transportation Company for Leaside residents. (James Bristow also started a coal and fuel industry in Leaside). The Leaside Munitions Company subsidized the Leaside bus service, helped finance the first water mains, provided the first electrical power and built sixty homes (mostly the semi-detached houses on Airdrie, Sutherland and Rumsey).

Looking south on Laid Drive, with a view of the Durant office building and the main bus terminal. Originally in The Story of Leaside by John Scott.

Early in 1918, the US government awarded a contract for 50,000 12-inch naval shells and even financed an additional plant for this contract, a large single-storey brick building fronting on Laird Drive and extending along Commercial Road. Consequently, on May 31, 1918, eighteen acres were purchased east of Laird Drive and south of the existing plant along Commercial Road. Several buildings were erected to house the necessary forging presses, billet heating ovens and related equipment. However, after only two or three of these 12-inch shells had been produced, the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918 and all production came to a standstill. The Americans gave the building to the Munitions Company in exchange for the cancelled contract. This marked the conclusion of the Leaside Munitions Company Ltd. The American building was left standing, but the other buildings were eventually demolished.

A fire occurring in April 1919 at the CWC Dundas Works closed down operations there. Work began immediately to move the wire manufacturing equipment to the Leaside plant. The buildings occupied were those fronting on Laird Drive, including the office buildings which had been built in 1918, the three-storey structure and the one-storey building extending east on Wicksteed Avenue. The other buildings, formerly occupied by the Leaside Munitions Company, were much too large and were sold to Durant Motors.

During the war years, the upper floor of the three-storey building provided barracks for the pilot trainees at the flying field located north of Wicksteed and east of Sutherland Drive. At the end of the war, three of the nine wooden hangars were purchased by Canada Wire and Cable for storage and carpentry shops. The last hangar was destroyed in 1971.

DURANT MOTORS

Durant Motors of Canada was incorporated September 3, 1921, the American “parent” being Durant Motors Inc. When Billy Durant, the American entrepreneur, lost control of General Motors in 1920, he decided to create a new empire for himself⁷ At this time, there were four other vehicle manufacturers in the Toronto area. They were: Willys Overland at Weston, Dodge Bros. of Canada making 40 cars a day on Dupont Avenue, the Ford Motor and assembly plant also on Dupont, and an obscure truck manufacturer Harmer-Knowles, located on Concord Avenue. After signing a 20-year contract with the American Durant firm granting Canadian rights, he was set to build and sell the low-priced Star and the medium-priced Durant motor car elsewhere. Accordingly, the factory site of the now defunct Leaside Munitions Company Ltd. was purchased from CWC and enlarged. The plant was built in three months. Temporary towers were built at each end of the site to monitor the construction and photographs were taken and rushed to New York to keep them apprised of the progress. Built to Durant specifications, the plant had the first depressed assembly line, that is, it was flush to the floor versus one foot above ground. When the Durant Motors of Canada Ltd. was established at Leaside in 1921, the company owned one building which covered a space of two acres. By 1931, they had purchased an additional eighteen acres and increased their plant size to eleven buildings. While retaining half the Canadian company’s shares, Billy Durant was also to receive nearly half the profits.

The first Durant car manufactured in Canada was built March 1, 1922. “It is a Canadian automobile company, controlled by Canadian capital, directed and managed by a Canadian executive, which builds and merchandizes an outstanding line of passenger cars and commercial vehicles.”⁸ An interesting statement, with the American Billy Durant controlling half of the Canadian shares. Initially, mechanical parts were bought in the States, but soon the Leaside plant made its own car bodies. During the first two years of operation, the company manufactured 13,000 Stars and Durants, which were sold from coast to coast in Canada by 445 dealers.⁹ The Flint car, however, although from an American Durant company car, was not built in Leaside.

Durant Motors. A partial view of the chassis line which had a capacity of up to 175 cars per day. Originally in The Story of Leaside by John Scott.

Building Durant motorcars and Rugby trucks in Leaside. Originally in The Story of Leaside by John Scott.

The Durant Car made in Leaside. Date: 1930. City of Toronto Archives, William James Collection.

By 1924, Durant had become Canada’s third largest domestic producer of automobiles. Both the production methods and models were being improved continuously and, by 1925, a Star Six and Road King speed truck were introduced to the public.

The Leaside plant was responsible for all of Durant’s business in Britain. By the end of 1926, 5000 cars had been exported to the UK and Durant’s profit was a quarter of a million dollars for the year.¹⁰ While the US firm was beginning a gradual decline, Leaside was booming, with all previous deficits wiped out.

In 1926, Roy D. Kerby became President. Born in 1888 on a farm near Petrolia, Ontario, Kerby was a staunch Canadian who refused to let his wife buy anything on their trips to the United States. He had joined McLaughlin Motors in 1913 but left after the takeover by General Motors. Soon after joining Durant, Kerby became its first Canadian board member. His reputation for integrity gave him the name “Golden Rule Kerby,” a strength he brought to Leaside. Under his leadership profits mounted the following year. Kerby kept his plant so busy with a new line of four and six-cylinder Durant and Rugby trucks that office space was turned into manufacturing space. Accordingly, a new administration building was begun as profits topped half a million.

Meanwhile the parent firm in Lansing, Michigan was experiencing increasing difficulties as competition had increased in their domestic marketplace. Their response was to create a new lineup in 1930, in the form of a low, racy, wire-wheeled Durant. This was the last major attempt to save the much-shrunken US empire. To finance the venture, the US firm borrowed $1,250,00.00 from the York Acceptance Corporation, a firm set up to finance sales from the Leaside factory, only to default on their loan, setting the stage for control to pass to the Canadian Company in Leaside. Full-page newspaper ads announced that Durant Motors was an all-Canadian company to meet Canadian needs.

By 1931, the Canadian Durant Motor Company had grown from one building (covering two acres) to 18 acres and 11 buildings with a floor space of 600,000 square feet. On March 14, 1931, Dominion Motors Ltd. of Leaside came into being with Roy D. Kerby as President and, on June 1, the new company took over Durant. A sales company continued under the name of “Durant” and the commercial vehicles under the name of “Rugby.” These products were distributed throughout Canada by a Durant organization consisting of some six hundred dealers.

The men at Dominion Motors started to work on a new car similar to the 1928 four-cylinder Durant. The Star was phased out and an elegant vehicle, the “Frontenac Sedan,” named after Count Frontenac, a governor of New France, appeared. It had a short wheelbase, a big engine that was noticably peppy and fast, a stylish V-shaped radiator grille, sloping windshield and a deep sun visor. The Special cost $898.00 and the DeLuxe $1,018.00. The best year for production was in 1928 (22,000–23,000 cars).

At the Canadian National Exhibition, the Frontenac was called “The Absolute Sensation of Motor Car Values.”¹¹ Over 100,000 people saw it over a 14 day period. One hundred new cars were sold to dealers across Ontario.

Kerby made a deal in 1931 to build Nash cars in Leaside. But this was not accomplished and in February, 1932, Dominion announced that it had the Canadian rights to build the Reo. For two years the “Reo Flying Clouds” were manufactured in Leaside, but Reo had its own sales and service organization.

Both the Frontenac and Durant were continued into 1932, but the economic hardships of the Depression had taken their toll. The Reo Company proved to be of little help, and Dominion Motors lost a quarter of a million dollars in 1931. As well, the sales of the Frontenac luxury car were poor. President Kerby decided to launch another line, the Frontenac 6–85, which resembled an updated Frontenac but with a cost of $300.00 more than the old 6–70, a decision that did not prove to be successful. At the end of 1932, Kerby dropped this line.

Later, in 1933, an even bigger, deluxe six cylinder car called the “Ace” became available. This luxury vehicle was built in the United States and imported on order to Leaside. The last Durant car was built in 1933. There were 50 cars manufactured that year, with a major Durant display featured at the Toronto Motor Show. The Canadian operation lasted one and a half years longer than the American plant.

The Depression and reliance on American builders for the Frontenac were the causes of its decline. By December 1933, the Leaside production stopped and Roy Kerby rejoined General Motors. The company sold what it could and wound up their operation by 1935, though an offshoot lingered on for years, selling parts at discount prices to its many “friends.” “When Dominion disappeared so did the last bit of Canada’s own automobile industry.”¹²