Sunday, April 11, 2021

We used to make things in this country #321 Port Hope File Mfg


For the better part of the 20th Century, Port Hope, Ontario has been a major producers of files and rasps.  Frederick Outram emigrated from England to Montreal and in partnership with others, opened the Dominion File Works.  Then, moving along and looking to open his own business, he opened the Globe File Manufacturing Company on Cavan St. in Port Hope in 1888. 
In 1901 Globe File Manufacturing Company merged with Rhode Island-based Nicholson File Company, (a company founded in 1834 by William Thomas Nicholson (1834-1893)) and the new owners continued to make files in Port Hope, moving in 1955 to a new factory on Peter St.
The Nicholson company was bought out by Cooper Tools (now Apex Tool Group) in 1976.  The Peter Street Nicholson File plant remained active until 1994 when in response to NAFTA it moved its operation to Mexico. In many ways it's the old familiar story of  Canadian manufacturing.

This Globe history was a long preamble to the ad at the top of the page. In searching for information on Globe, I found it in a Canadian Machinery magazine of 1906. It suggests this was another file-manufacturing concern in the city, one that seems to have left a great deal less evidence of its existence. Now I have an excuse for searching for files with that logo in old boxes of rusty files in junk stores... 
 

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