Leaside. Jane Pitfield
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.