A while back on my other blog on Wordpress, I did some reminiscing about a company I worked at back in the early 1980s. You can read those remembrances here and here. I was looking at them recently, and had to do some repairs on some items that have undergone linkrot over the years. I also decided to do some checking to see what has happened to that place in the ensuing years.
I knew that Ford Motor Company had sold its glass manufacturing operations to Asahi Flat Glass (AFG), which is now called AGC. I wondered how the evolution took place, and decided to do some checking. Fortunately, Industry Canada has the complete history of all corporations formed or continued under the Canada Business Corporations Act. That really helped, and I was able to reconstruct all the various movements into this PDF fiIe, complete with hyperlinks to all the various entries:
There are some caveats to this timeline:
- For one year, AFG migrated to Ontario before returning to the CBCA. There may have been other corporate activity going on during that time, but Ontario doesn't allow free access to their files in order to verify that.
- I personally know that Glaverbel Glass Ltd was the subject of extensive amalgamation activity under the previous Canada Corporations Act, but those files are not online. As well, Glaverbel (as well as its successor Canadian Glass Industries Ltd) had a Québec subsidiary (Verrerie Charlebois Inc) that was wound up with all its assets and liabilities being conveyed to CGIL. That was done as Québec company law did not allow for a more straightforward continuance to another jurisdiction at the time.
- Glaverbel was also a minority owner in National Glass Ltd out in BC, but that was sold off in 1980-81.
- The first Ford Glass Ltd began its existence back in the 1920s as Pilkington Brothers (Canada) Ltd. It took on the Ford name after Pilkington plc disposed it to Ford Motor Company in 1981.
- In a similar fashion to Glaverbel, Pilkington acquired a large network of local glaziers across Canada that have since been disposed of. It is unclear whether this chain of acquisitions was undertaken as asset purchases or amalgamations or both, but previous corporations laws were probably involved, and the records are probably still just on paper.
- The later Glaverbec entry is interesting, as it appears to have been an attempt by the original Belgian Glaverbel parent to take up an interest in a glass mill that AFG set up at Saint-Augustin-de-Desmaures near Québec City. It has since been shut down and repurposed by an appliance manufacturer, after Glaverbel was acquired by Asahi.
If anyone can undertake further research in the older corporate archives to take this further, I'm sure it would be very revealing.
