As taken from Vintage Canada March 1975

GM IN CANADA

The Early Years

Story and photos courtesy of the public relations department of General Motors of Canada Limited, Oshawa Ont.

In the year 1876 a man by the name of Robert Mclaughlin decided that his carriage works in Enniskillen must be moved to a more favourable location if it was to grow. There was no bank, Eniskillen was a long way from the nearest railway and supplies had to be carted in over rough dirt roads. He decided to move to the bustling town of Oshawa.

Once the name Mclaughlin became known for quality, other carriage makers began buying the gear and soon competitors began purchasing complete carriages.

With business expanding so rapidly it was found necessary to put a salesman on the road. In 1888, John Henry became the first traveller for the McLaughlin Carriage Company. Later William Stevenson, Manley Rose and T. A. Chadburn Joined the company and sold Mclaughlin Carriages literally from coast to coast

At this time there was a major bottleneck. The plant was a long way from the Oshawa freight yards. All the carriages had to be loaded onto flat cars at the factory and teamed down to the yard. There they had to be unloaded and reloaded onto rail cars. The boxcars used in those days were too small to accommodate the carriages so they had to be loaded onto flat cars, 25 at a time, and then the flat car had to be "housed in" to protect the carriage during transport. It was a costly and time-wasting way of getting the carriage from the factory to the purchaser.

Then came the great issue in Oshawa about the railway. After strong opposition, speeches for and against, a vote was taken and it was decided to let the Rathburn Company of Deseronto build a railroad through Oshawa for the benefit of the town's industry.

The breaking of the shipping bottleneck, soon led to another problem. Business had so increased that the present quarters no longer were large enough.

In town was a building that had been used to build furniture. The furniture business had failed and the building was standing unused. In an unusual deal the outgrown carriage works was traded in on the new building and production began in the new plant in 1893.

With a continuing growth in the sale of carriages, it was decided to open a branch office. In 1896 George McLaughlin was sent to Saint John, New Brunswick, where he opened the first branch away from home. Later similar branches were opened in Montreal, London, Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary.

All was not to be a bed of roses however and in 1899 the company suffered a serious loss when its Oshawa plant burned to the ground. There was no fire protection as the only water supply was lost as soon as the fire started and water had to be pumped from the town hall by an old pumper that couldn't even pump the water to the first floor. There was no insurance on the building or contents and things looked very dark for the future of the business.

As it turned out, things were not as bad as they seemed. Offers of aid flowed in from no less than 15 cities offering loans if the McLaughlins would re-establish their business in their locality.

Robert McLaughlin wanted to stay in Oshawa, however, and with a loan of $50,000. from the city of Oshawa, to be repaid ''as convenient", he set about rebuilding.

Not taking a chance again, the new building was of mill construction with 5 inch floors and castings on the main posts, so that in case of fire, the walls would remain. An underground water tank and a fire pump with a 6-inch pipe outlet was installed. (It wasn't until 1905 that the city of Oshawa installed its own water works.) A generator for electric light made the new plant the most modern one to be found anywhere.

While the new plant was being built, the carriage business was moved to Gananoque where the men from Oshawa built carriages from scratch. All the equipment, material and designs were lost in the fire and all that was left was the know-how and the skill of the employees.

When the new plant was ready, in the summer of 1900, the business returned to Oshawa where it continued to grow.

Then over the horizon in a cloud of dust came a newfangled contraption called the automobile. Quick to see the opportunity, young "Sam" Mclaughlin went to the United States to visit some friends he had met at carriage conventions and to investigate the automobile business.

After looking around, he decided to test a car being built by an acquaintance in Jackson, Michigan. Two of the cars were sent to Oshawa where they were tested by "Sam" and an executive of the company, Oliver Hezzlewood.  Commented R.S. Mclaughlin, .. As an automobile they are a poor job of plumbing".

A second attempt at the car business saw R. S. Mclaughlin conferring with another member of the carriage trade in the States, William Durant, who had purchased the Buick Motor Car Company. Before going to see Durant, however, R. S. Mclaughlin bought a Model F, two-cylinder Buick, in Toronto for $1650. Before he had driven it half-way back to Oshawa he decided that this was the car he wanted to build in Canada.

A visit to the Buick plant in Flint saw R. S. Mclaughlin going over every detail of the operation for two and a half days. Final details of the financial arrangement could not be worked out, however, and "Sam" left Flint without any plan to build the Buick in Oshawa.

However R. S. Mclaughlin still felt that a car should be built in Canada and with his brother George worked out the details.  An engineer, Arthur Milbrath, was installed in a building on the west side of Mary Street set aside as an automobile plant.

The plant was equipped with automatic lathes and machines by the dozen to produce cars. The cylinders, crankshaft and pistons were ordered according to specification and the engine casting was to be produced in Oshawa. The body was designed by R. S. Mclaughlin.

Everything was in readiness to produce the first 100 cars when the engineer became seriously ill with pleurisy. The automobile shop lay idle.

A hurried call to their old friend William Durant requesting the loan of an engineer brought the McLaughlins unexpected results. Durant arrived in Oshawa himself and brought with him two of his executives and a solution to the problem which they could not resolve earlier.

"It will work" agreed the McLaughlins and within five minutes after consulting their father, Robert, the brothers Sam and George, signed a contract to build the Buick motor car in Canada.

The contract was to last for 15 years, during which time Durant was to supply Buick motors and the McLaughlins would build the rest of the car, including the body.

The 100 cars on which they had been working were scrapped and in 1908 the McLaughlin Motor Car Company produced 154 cars in various models.

Meanwhile Durant had been buying up companies making cars and automobile parts and on September 16, 1908 he organized a company and GM was born.  Buick and Oldsmobile motor car companies joined GM in 1908. Durant added the Oakland and Cadillac cars in 1909.  During 1908 the Oakland company had produced a four-cylinder car that undersold all competitors and became famous as a hill climber. In 1926 a particularly popular model of this car was produced called the Pontiac and since that time production has concentrated on that model.

It is perhaps interesting to note that in 1908 Durant had a 48 hour option to buy the Ford Motor car company for nine and half million dollars, which is less than GM of Canada now spends for goods and services in three days. However when Durant went to the bank to borrow the money, the bankers told him, "We've changed our minds. The Ford business isn't worth that much." Thus was lost the opportunity to bring the Ford company into the fold.

In 1911 Durant set up an independent company known as the Chevrolet Motor car company. It was his intention to build the Chevrolet in Toronto.  At a luncheon in New York one day, R. S. McLaughlin casually asked Durant how his plans were coming.  Before he could answer, Nathan Hofheimer, a stockholder, asked Durant, "Why don't you give that to the McLaughlin boys, Billy?" Durant looked at McLaughlin and laughed, "Well, Sam, do you want it"  Sam wanted it.

The first Mclaughlin-built Chevrolet rolled off the line in December, 1915. .

In 1918 the final big decision was made-to sell the Mclaughlin business to General Motors. The contract to build the Buick would soon be up and it was not expected that as favourable a contract could be acquired again. Chevrolet in the States was now a part of GM and it could hardly be expected that GM would allow Mclaughlin to continue making just one of their models.

The only condition under which GM would buy the Mclaughlin business was that George and Sam Mclaughlin remain and run it.

Thus in 1918 the Mclaughlin Motor car company and the Chevrolet Motor Car Company of Canada were merged into General Motors of Canada, Limited. The Mclaughlin Carriage company was sold to a carriage works in Orillia in 1915.

Mr. Mclaughlin thought that the one development that more than any other contributed to the incredible growth of the industry, would surprise most people, for it had nothing to do with the advance in engines or the design and structure of the car. It was the development of the Duco finish by Charles F. Kettering, Research Chief for General Motors, who also invented the self- starter, Ethyl anti-knock fluid, and designed the first V-8 engine in America as used in Cadillac as well as Diesel locomotives.

Up to 1914 automobiles were finished with the same paints and varnishes used on carriages, which required up to three weeks to dry in fine weather and longer when the weather was humid. The magnitude of the paint-job bottleneck can well be imagined and present day huge production would have been utterly impossible. Kettering's development of this finish made possible a paint that could keep pace with the production lines.

An industry, any industry, is only as good as the people who work for it. That General Motors in Canada has had good people employed is evident by the fact that it has grown from a company which produced 154 cars in its first year to an organization which now builds over 350,000 cars a year. Still in keeping with Robert Mclaughlin's philosophy of "one grade only and that the best", GM of Canada relies on its employees to continue the ideals that made the name Mclaughlin and General Motors a symbol of quality workmanship.