Enamel & Heating Products Limited

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Enamel & Heating Products Limited traces its origins to several early enterprises of which the oldest was the tinsmithing shop built in Sackville, N.S. by Charles Fawcett, an English craftsman, in 1852. The modern company’s Plant No. 1, in Sackville, is on the site of Fawcett’s shop. Charles Fawcett originally made tinware to meet the needs of the growing number of settlers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Later he switched to stoves, which he made especially to meet local conditions. These were soon in such demand that skilled workers had to be recruited from overseas to man new and enlarged workshops. By 1893, Fawcett owned a large plant on the original site. Fire levelled the buildings in that year, however, sparing only a few patterns and one small warehouse. Fawcett rebuilt in the following year.

Plant No. 2 of Enamel & Heating Products Limited, in Amherst, N.S., grew out of a combination of businesses of which Crossman & Laws, founded in 1877, was the oldest. This firm made stoves, ranges, furnaces and hollowware. In 1895 Crossman & Laws absorbed another Amherst firm, Knight & Black, which made tinware and sold stoves. The combination specialized in marketing hot-air furnaces made by Crossman & Laws under the trade name “Cumberland.”

The combination was further expanded when C. A. Lusby joined it and still another stove business, Thompson and Morrison, was bought out and taken into the group. The new company was known as C. A. Lusby & Company – later the Amherst Foundry – which was absorbed by Enamel & Heating Products Limited in 1928.

In 1950 the company acquired the Amherst N.S. factory of Canadian Car & Foundry Company, consisting of 45 buildings covering an area of 288,000 square feet. After a year of operation as a wholly-owned subsidiary, Atlantic Industries Limited, the complex was transferred to Enamel & Heating Products and became its plant No. 4.

Plants No.A man working in the steel rolling mill 1 in Sackville and No. 2 in Amherst produce ranges, stoves, furnaces and air conditioning systems; No. 4 at Amherst houses two separate divisions, Steel and Aircraft.

The company has always been a substantial exporter, especially to South Africa, for which it developed a Fawcett range especially designed to meet local conditions. Following South Africa’s adoption of import restrictions in 1949, an arrangement was concluded between Enamel & Heating and its South African agents, The Lewis Appliance Corporation, for the organization of a manufacturing company to manufacture Fawcett products in South Africa.

In 1964 the company acquired Airco Products Limited of Vancouver, B.C., a manufacturer of warm air furnaces, grilles, registers and fittings, which now operates as a division of Enamel & Heating Products Limited.

The Maritime Provinces have a number of highly successful industries, headed by the Dominion Steel & Coal and other names of national importance, including that of the company under review.

Founded in 1852, it has the distinction of being one of the oldest companies in Canada, and one that has survived a great many vicissitudes and changes that have increased but never eliminated its basic products.

The founders were Charles Fawcett (from whose name the company takes its Consumer products trade mark), William Knight, and Joseph Spratt, who founded the Albion Iron Works (now the Victoria Machinery), see page 47, in Victoria, Vancouver Island.

They were all workers in metal, and Charles Fawcett, a tinsmith who served his apprenticeship in England, designed and manufactured what must have been the first stove made in the Maritimes.

William Knight also started making them in Amherst N.S. in 1882, in what developed into an important organization for those days, the Amherst Foundry, which bought out its competitors and which was in turn absorbed by the Enamel and Heating Products.

All that is history today, which can be written because the company survived some bad periods of depression and competition, largely because of the efforts of Norman Arthur Hesler, its chief executive for many years, and at this writing. Mr. Hesler came by his experience the hard way as the manager of the Canadian Venezuelian Ore Company, located in Venezuelan jungle territory.

Plants and Products–The company operates four big plants, including one formerly owned by the Canadian Car & Foundry Company in Amherst, which it purchased in 1950.

Plant No. 1, in Sackville, New Brunswick, manufactures an exhaustive variety of cooking ranges and home heating appliances using any kind of fuel or combination of fuels. It is a model operation, and its wet process enamelling department, with two oilfired enamelling furnaces, is one of the most modem in the country. Plant No. I consists of twenty-six buildings, more or less connected, and laid out on a definite plan to ensure continuous movement in one direction from the foundry to the shipping room. Departments include polishing and plating, casting, cleaning, foundry, (ferrous and nonferrous), drilling and tapping, sheet metal, machine shop, wood-working shop, vitreousenamelling, oil heater assembly, japanning, and main assembly.

Plant No. 2 at Amherst also manufactures heating equipment; using gas, oil and solid fuel, and an important line of winter airconditioning specialities.

Plant No. 4, also at Amherst, operates a Rolling Mill Division and an Aircraft Division, both known throughout the trade as “Enheat”. The Aircraft Division has heat treating equipment, a paint shop, aluminum and sheet metal spot welders, processing equipment for alodizing, chromodizing, anodizing, cadmium, nickel, copper and chrome plating. Complete facilities include a hydro press, ceco stamps, routers, rolls and brakes. Its Inspection Department contains Rockwell, Magnaflux and Zyglo equipment.

The rolling Mill Division is a prime roller of concrete reinforcing steel, with a fabricating shop engaged in bending and fabricating reinforcing steel to the customers’ specifications. The Forge Shop is equipped to manufacture drift bolts, wharf bolts and tie-rods. No. 4 is, without doubt, one of the most modern machine shops in Eastern Canada.

Enheat Products–The Aircraft Division manufactures the aft fuselage and empennage units for the CS2F “Tracker”, a sub-hunter and killer aircraft used on H.M.C.S. Bonaventure. Enheat Aircraft maintains complete facilities for civilian and military aircraft repair and overhaul, and on the RCAF Neptunes and Banshees.

PERSONNEL–The Company employs in the vicinity of 1,000 people on a salary or hourly basis. An engineering and development staff is included among the key personnel.

ADMINISTRATION–N.A. Hesler, President and General Manager; Directors: N.A. Hesler, N.T. Avard, A.R. French, H.G. Hesler, E.A. Kajander, A.M. MacKay, F.R. Rand, W.J. Wienand, Jr., C.N. Wilson.

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