Ad from the Border Cities Star – December 31, 1926.
Funny how diversified our industries used to be. Somewhere along the line some genius decided putting all your eggs in one basket was a better idea.
This plant was located on Kildare Road, immediately south of Cunningham Sheet Metal. The side today is a parking lot for the GM Plant. Plant one was located directly across the street. That site is also a GM parking lot today.
you know i’ve been thinking why don’t the big3 try and build other stuff too? just like this.
why can’t they maybe start up a plant (re tool) in windsor and make us some streetcars, the rails it would need, small ships, anything!
cool stuff as always!
Growing up nearby in the 60’s I remember Walker Metal as a full blown foundry replete with orange sidewalks(a la Zalevs),fallout and just poured red hot crankshafts cooling in plain sight(but fenced off).
Chrysler bought the place in late 60’s and operated it as a foundry until it closed sometime in the 70’s.
I don’t think we need another Zalev’s ring o’stain location in the city. Why was Walker in these industries? I don’t think it would supply much to the liquor side. Maybe they saw profit and simply bought into it, rather than it being a feeder to the main business.
Hoskins appears to live on:
http://www.nuclearmarket.com/Suppliers/details2.cfm?IDcompany=867
My grandfather worked at Walker Metal from 1932-1969 as a welder. Told me that it was like working in hell. He had a lot of health issues later in life- (No wonder). Yes, there was a hanger line that ran outside of the plant to aid in the cooling off of crankshafts and engine blocks. He said the steam coming off of them in the winter at night made a pretty eerie sight. Lucky for him Chrysler bought the company around 1964 and re-named it the Windsor Foundry, so he was able to retire with a full Chrysler pension. Not sure when Chrysler shut down the place though.
I agree Andrew. Looking back at how diverse Windsor’s economy used to be at the turn of the 20th century it is shocking to see that we are such a one-horse town now. I guess that has come back to bite us all in the ass. But I do have to say, we are to blame. Everyone wants everything for cheap, cheap, cheap! That has now come full circle and we are paying the price with our jobs.
So to all of your readers out there. Enjoy your continued shopping in the burbs, your continued shopping at the dollar stores, Sprawl-mart, Crappy Tire, any and all big box stores (yes, sometimes it is a necessity so what does that tell you what these stores are donig to our LOCAL economy?)….you get what you sow. Too bad you are pulling us all down with you!
Aaron, because it negates what they are trying to build ie. cars. By building mass transit the companies are cutting their marketshare because people will use cars less and thus not buy vehicles as often.
Maybe N. America shouldn’t be inventing new products, master them and then ship them offshores to be built so we can buy it cheaper as we have done with TV’s, textiles, electronics and now cars. The difference beign that we now have NOTHING to replace vehicles being manufactured. Without a manufacturing base an economy cannot survive.
The myth behind a “service based” economy is just that, a myth. Europe has one of the strongest manufacturing bases in the world which the service economy feeds off of. In N. America we do not even have much of a service base (who comes here to go on vacation? Not many. Besides we have levelled our history so in another 100 years what will people want to see?). We screwed ourselves.
The Chrysler Foundry closed in 70-71. My godfather was the Plant Manager! He and his family moved to Michigan, then Ohio and Indiana where he made his way in the RV Industry. They never moved back to Windsor.
ME brings up some good points about manufacturing bases and service bases. There are many people out there that want you to drink their Kool-Aid into believing that emphasizing a service base over a manufacturing base is the here and now. Question: then why are China, India, Vietnam so anxious to produce goods. Why is the Japanese economy based on manufacturing, technology and research? Because wealth is created by product and product demand.
question to app did your godfather tell you why chrysler closed the factory in 70-71 and do you know when they demolished the foundry?
re: paul.
No he didn’t but doing research shows that it was a victim of the Autopact (from allpar.com). My father says in around 1972 or 1973. As much as a few plants were created during the first 10 years of the Autopact (Pillette Road and GM Trim were perfect examples)you can see now that they are victims too. Recall as well that Ford ripped down their assembly operations in Windsor (1970). We have family photos standing in front of the remains as my Grandad had worked at Ford and my father wanted us to see where “the Boss” had once worked. Many people do not know that where a good part of present day Hiram Walker’s resides was once the property of Ford Motor Company. Funny how an assembly plant (Pilette), a foundry (Windsor Casting) and a trim plant (GM) are either gone recently or now undergoing dismantling. History does repeat.
Well, time to go off on a tangent, but I think the solution to the points about how to bring back the manufacturing base is for the Canadian government to devalue the Canadian dollar with lower Bank of Canada interest rates. Make the Canadian dollar worth 50 cents US or less. Heck, even make it worth 10 US cents on the Canadian dollar. Imports will cost more. Exports to other countries will be cheaper. People will want to spend the worthless Canadian dollar. Jobs will come back to take advantage of the low Canadian dollar. Windsor’s economy is based mostly on exports. The Canadian dollar is way too high and the economy is seriously broken from when it was above US par last year. Wealth in this country is created by low prices and by devaluing the dollar, I think it’s still possible to save this city’s manufacturing base. Call your MP, let them know what you think…
app could you send me the photos of the remains of the ford plant on riverside dr. I would be interested in seeing them. Thank you
ME – right as usual. needless to say, i wasn’t thinking about the car.
man, i miss being here on a perminent bases.
If I can dig them up I will forward them to Andrew.
The reason Windsor became a one-horse town is because the great wages and benefits offered by the old Big 3 made it nearly impossible for non-automotive enterprises to find good workers in Windsor and Essex County unless they matched the Big 3 on wages and benefits. As a result, a lot of smaller companies were forced to leave Windsor or were driven out of business by employees who wanted the same wages and benefits that their compatriots were getting from the Big 3. Throw in Windsor’s reputation as a militant union town, which discouraged a lot of companies from moving to move to Windsor, and you have a future ghost town.
I was told the reason Walker metals closed after the short Chrysler purchase was due to various safety and health violations that Chrysler accidentally purchased with the company, I do know in the U.S they were dealing with some similar health and safety problems at Eldon axle in Michigan which they were taking a lot of heat about, do you think it was cheaper to close the plant that fix the violations? The reason it was not feasable to close Eldon axle was it supplied most of the company’s axles. Any more information would be great!
I recently discovered via some archival Vernon’s City of Windsor directories that my grandmother was employed at Walker Metal Products (ca 1944-47) as an “iron pourer” of all things. Neither she nor my father ever made mention of this to me.
I have a photo of her with a group of 12 other women in “Rosie-the-Riveter” garb posing outside of a factory. I want to determine if this was taken on the grounds of Walker Metal Products or if it dates to the earlier 40’s when I understood her to have held a war-time factory job in Northern Ontario. I’d like to know exactly where this foundry was located so that I can compare some of the homes I see depicted in the photo’s background to those in the same vicinity in the present day.