Canadian Car and Foundry (CC&F), also variously known as "Canadian Car & Foundry" or more familiarly as "Can Car", was a manufacturer of buses, railwayrolling stock, forestry equipment, and later aircraft for the Canadian market. CC&F history goes back to 1897, but the main company was established in 1909 from an amalgamation of several companies and later became part of Hawker Siddeley Canada through the purchase by A.V. Roe Canada in 1957. Today the remaining factories are part of Alstom after its acquisition of Bombardier Transportation completed in 2021.[1]
In 1911 the CC&F Board of Directors recognized that the company could improve its efficiency if they were able to produce their own steel castings, a component that was becoming common to all their products. They purchased Montreal Steel Works Limited at Longue-Pointe, the largest producer of steel castings in Canada, and the Ontario Iron & Steel Company, Ltd. at Welland, ON, which included both a steel foundry and a rolling mill.
Buses and Forestry Equipment were produced at Fort William, Ontario and railcars in Montreal and Amherst. Streetcars were manufactured between 1897 and 1913, however the company focused exclusively on rebuilding existing streetcars after 1913.
A few years later, CC&F acquired the assets of Pratt & Letchworth, a Brantford, ON, rail car manufacturer. In the latter part of World War I, the expanding company opened a new plant in Fort William (now Thunder Bay) to manufacture rail cars and ships which included the French minesweepers Inkerman and Cerisoles which were both lost in Lake Superior; the Amherst plant started by Rhodes & Curry in Amherst was closed in 1931. In an attempt to enter the aviation market, CC&F produced a small series of Grumman G.23 Goblin aircraft under licence and developed an unsuccessful, indigenous-designed fighter biplane, the Gregor FDB-1.
Canada Car Company
Canada Car Company was a railcar manufacturer based in Turcot, Quebec (a suburb of Montreal), which later merged with several other companies to form Canadian Car and Foundry in 1909.[3] Canada Car Company was incorporated January 1905 with W.P. Coleman as president and Sir Hugh Allan as vice-president. The company's plant began operations in 1905 and manufactured freight and passenger cars.
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During World War I, CC&F had signed large contracts with Russia and Britain for delivery of ammunition. An enormous factory was constructed in the Kingsland to assemble, package, and prepare artillery shells for shipment to foreign ports. No shells were manufactured there. On 11 January 1917, a fire started in one of the buildings. In four hours, the fire spread to the approximately 500,000 pieces of 3-inch (76mm) explosive shells stored there, causing several explosions, destroying the entire plant. The explosion launched artillery shells and building debris across the area, destroying several homes and businesses in the nearby town of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, and was visible from New York City. The total loss, including the ordnance, was estimated at $16,750,000 (equivalent to $388 million in 2022).[4][5][6]
Canadian Car and Foundry had a contract to build 12 Navarin-class minesweepers for the French Navy.[7][8] The vessels were completed in the fall of 1918—before the war ended, but too late to see operational service. Two of the vessels, the Inkerman and Cerisoles, were lost in a November gale, on Lake Superior, on their maiden voyage. Other vessels were sold into civilian service.
CC&F Hawker Hurricane X on a test flight over Fort William, OntarioCC&F-built Harvard Mk.4
By 1939, with war on the horizon, Canadian Car & Foundry and its Chief Engineer, Elsie MacGill, were contracted by the Royal Air Force to produce the Hawker Hurricane (Marks X, XI and XII). Refinements introduced by MacGill on the Hurricane included skis and de-icing gear. When the production of the Hurricane was complete in 1943, CC&F's workforce of 4,500 (half of them women) had built over 1,400 aircraft, about 10% of all Hurricanes built.[10][11]
Following the success of the Hurricane contract, CC&F sought out and received a production order for the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver. Eventually, 834 Helldivers were produced by CC&F in various versions from SBW-1, SBW-1B, SBW-3,SBW-4E and SBW-5. Some of the Curtiss divebombers were sent directly to the Royal Navy under Lend-Lease arrangements. CC&F also built the North American Harvard under licence, many of the aircraft being supplied to European air forces to train post war military pilots.
In 1944, the Canadian Car & Foundry built a revolutionary new aircraft in its Montreal shops - the Burnelli CBY-3, also called the Loadmaster. There were two examples built of an aerofoil-fuselage design originally developed by Vincent J. Burnelli. The CBY-3 was never to enter full-scale production and was cancelled less than one year later.
After the Second World War, the CC&F returned to its roots as a rail car manufacturer. They also made a successful leap into the streetcar business, supplying Montreal, Toronto, Regina, Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton, and the Brazilian cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo with various types of streetcars. The company concluded a licensing agreement with ACF-Brill (the successor to J. G. Brill) in 1944 to manufacture and sell throughout Canada buses and trolley coaches of ACF-Brill design as Canadian Car-Brill, in later years often written "CCF-Brill", for short. CC&F built 1,114 trolley buses[12] and a few thousand buses under the name. Trolleybus production ended in 1954; Edmonton Transit System's No. 202, a 1954 CCF-Brill T48A, was the last Brill trolleybus built for any city.[13]
Production of the Brill diesel bus continued through the 1950s. In 1960, CC&F launched an entirely new TD bus design under the Canadian Car name to compete with the General Motors New Look model, but it was not successful and production was discontinued in 1962.
In 1957, wishing to diversify, the British Hawker Siddeley Group acquired CC&F through its Canadian subsidiary, A.V. Roe Canada Ltd. In 1962, A.V. Roe Canada was dissolved when the Avro Arrow program was suddenly terminated, and its assets became part of Hawker Siddeley Canada. During the 1970s they introduced the BiLevel Coach heavy railway passenger car, which would go on to great success.
CCF re-emerged as Can-Car Rail in 1983 as a joint division between Hawker Siddeley Canada and UTDC. The Can-Car Rail operations were based in Thunder Bay. Sold to SNC-Lavalin in 1986, a financial shakeup led to the firm being returned to the Government of Ontario, and then quickly re-sold to Bombardier Transportation. Through a series of further acquisitions, mergers and rationalisations, CC&F faded from the annals of significant Canadian manufacturers, although the company still exists today as the Alstom railcar facility in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Bobcat (armoured personnel carrier) - 1 prototype built and project terminated; originally developed by Leyland (Canada) which was bought out by Canadian Car and Foundry (itself acquired by Avro Canada) and terminated under Hawker Siddeley Canada
TreeFarmer Forestry Heavy Equipment (under license from Garrett Enumclaw Co.)
Canada Diesel and Canada Diesel WT highway tractors.[15]
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Many CC&F-built buses have been preserved as historic vehicles, some in operating condition. For example, the Transit Museum Society, in Vancouver, has at least seven CC&F buses in its collection, including two CC&F-Brill trolleybuses.[16]
1 2 Saxberg, Kelly (director) (1999). Rosies of the North. Retrieved 23 July 2012– via National Film Board of Canada. Documentary film on the wartime role of women workers at Fort William.
1 2 3 Porter, Harry; Worris, Stanley F.X. (1979). Trolleybus Bulletin No. 109: Databook II. Louisville, Kentucky: North American Trackless Trolley Association (defunct). pp.63–64.
↑ Isgar, Carl F. (January–February 2009). "Preservation Update". Trolleybus Magazine. No.283. National Trolleybus Association (UK). p.11. ISSN0266-7452.
↑ A.V. Roe Corporate Annual Report for the year ended July 31, 1957, page 15. Copy held by Rare Books and Special Collections Unit, McGill University Library
The Halton County Radial Railway is a working museum of electric streetcars, other railway vehicles, buses and trolleybuses. It is operated by the Ontario Electric Railway Historical Association (OERHA). It is focused primarily on the history of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) and its predecessor, the Toronto Transportation Commission, Its collection includes PCC, Peter Witt, CLRV and ALRV, and earlier cars from the Toronto streetcar system as well as G-series and M-series Toronto subway cars.
The Hamilton Street Railway (HSR) is the public transport agency for Hamilton, Ontario. The name is a legacy of the company's early period, when public transit in Hamilton was primarily served by streetcars. Although streetcars are no longer used in the city today, the HSR operates bus and paratransit services, with a ridership of 21 million passengers a year.
The Urban Transportation Development Corporation Ltd. (UTDC) was a Crown corporation owned by the Government of Ontario, Canada. It was established in the 1970s as a way to enter what was then expected to be a burgeoning market in advanced light rail mass transit systems. UTDC built a respected team of engineers and project managers. It developed significant expertise in linear propulsion, steerable trucks and driverless system controls which were integrated into a transit system known as the Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS). It was designed to provide service at rider levels between a traditional subway on the upper end and buses and streetcars on the lower, filling a niche aimed at suburbs that were otherwise expensive to service.
Twin Coach was an American vehicle manufacturing company from 1927 to 1955, located in Kent, Ohio, and a maker of marine engines and airplane parts until the 1960s. It was formed by brothers Frank and William Fageol when they left the Fageol Motor Company in 1927. They established the company in Kent to manufacture and sell buses with a new concept design. The body structure of this new bus was unique in that the body also became the frame and two engines – "twin" engines – were used to allow for larger passenger loads. This concept was patented by William B. Fageol.
The Ottawa Car Company was a builder of streetcars for the Canadian market and was founded in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1891 as an outgrowth of the carriage building operations of William W. Wylie. Its plant was located at Kent and Slater Streets, a short distance from Parliament Hill. The company was a subsidiary of Ottawa Electric Railway, in turn controlled by Ahearn & Soper.
Hawker Siddeley Canada was the Canadian unit of the Hawker Siddeley Group of the United Kingdom and manufactured railcars, subway cars, streetcars, aircraft engines and ships from the 1960s to 1980s.
The Transit Museum Society of British Columbia (TMS) is dedicated to the restoration and preservation of decommissioned transit vehicles in Vancouver and the adjoining areas. Based in Langley, the Society currently has a fleet of seventeen vehicles: fifteen operational and two non-operational. These vehicles were previously in use by both public and private operating companies between 1937 and 2021.
The Toronto Transit Commission version of the Peter Witt streetcar was designed by the Cleveland Street Railway in the United States and built under license by Canada Car and Foundry of Montreal. A small number were also built by the Ottawa Car Company and the Preston Car Company. Between 1921 and 1923, 575 of these streetcars were ordered by the TTC for use on Toronto streets.
The Shore Line Trolley Museum is a trolley museum located in East Haven, Connecticut. Incorporated in 1945, it is the oldest continuously operating trolley museum in the United States. The museum includes exhibits on trolley history in the visitors' center and offers rides on restored trolleys along its 1.5 mi (2.4 km) track as the Branford Electric Railway. In addition to trolleys, the museum also operates a small number of both trolleybuses and conventional buses.
Streetcars were part of the public transit service in Kenosha, Wisconsin in the first third of the 20th century, and returned to this role in 2000.
The Kitchener Public Utilities Commission was the municipal public utilities commission for the city of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, as well as the surrounding area. Its former office in downtown Kitchener, constructed in 1931 in Beaux-Arts style, has been designated under the Ontario Heritage Act as both historically and architecturally significant, and is one of the Kitchener's few surviving historic public buildings.
With five different modes of transport, the San Francisco Municipal Railway runs one of the most diverse fleets of vehicles in the United States. Roughly 550 diesel-electric hybrid buses, 300 electric trolleybuses, 250 modern light rail vehicles, 50 historic streetcars and 40 cable cars see active duty.
The Vancouver trolley bus system forms part of the TransLink public transport network serving Metro Vancouver in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Opened in 1948, the system was originally owned and operated by the British Columbia Electric Railway. By 1954, Vancouver had the largest trolley bus fleet in Canada, with 327 units, and the fleet grew to an all-time peak of 352 in early 1957. There were 19 routes by 1955 and a peak of 20 by the second quarter of 1957. The last route to open in the 1950s was the only express trolley bus service that ever existed in Canada. Several, mostly short, extensions to the system were constructed in the 1980s and later.
The San Francisco trolleybus system forms part of the public transportation network serving San Francisco, in the state of California, United States. Opened on October 6, 1935, it presently comprises 15 lines and is operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway, commonly known as Muni, with around 300 trolleybuses. In San Francisco, these vehicles are also known as "trolley coaches", a term that was the most common name for trolleybuses in the United States in the middle decades of the 20th century. In 2022, the system had a ridership of 33,664,000, or about 148,900 per weekday as of the second quarter of 2023.
The Philadelphia trolleybus system forms part of the public transportation network serving Philadelphia, in the state of Pennsylvania, United States. It opened on October 14, 1923, and is now the second-longest-lived trolleybus system in the world. One of only four such systems currently operating in the U.S., it presently comprises three lines and is operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), with a fleet of 38 trolleybuses, or trackless trolleys as SEPTA calls them. The three surviving routes serve North and Northeast Philadelphia and connect with SEPTA's Market–Frankford rapid transit line.
The Edmonton trolley bus system formed part of the public transport network in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada between 1939 and 2009. Operated by Edmonton Transit System (ETS), the system had, at its peak, a fleet of 137 trolley buses, and a total route length of 127 km (79 mi).
Prior to 1959, Montreal, Quebec, Canada had an extensive streetcar system. The streetcar network had its beginnings with the horsecar era of the Montreal City Passenger Railway in 1861. The initial line was along Rue Notre Dame from Rue du Havre to Rue McGill.
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