With Heritage Week upon the city, August 3-10, the City of Burlington is celebrating two milestones this year. The city first became a town 110 years ago in 1914, and was then established as a city 50 years ago in 1974.
The theme of this year’s Heritage Week is “Innovation”, and I thought I would bring you a few notable innovations from Burlington.
Capo Polishes Limited
Capo Polishes has been going since 1893. Their product ranges in polishes, pastes, powders as well as leather care products. Currently operating as Capo Industries Ltd. with an expanded line of products. Their head office is in Burlington.
A.C. Gilbert of Canada Ltd
A.C. Gilbert of Canada Ltd invented the “Erector Model Set” which was manufactured in Burlington in the 1960s. This product later became ‘Meccano”.
Munro Games
The original table hockey game was made right here in Burlington. In 1932, Donald H. Munro of Burlington, built a mechanical table hockey game as a present for his family, using bits and pieces of material found around his home. Once it found its way to market, the family was kept busy satisfying demand for the games.
Munro was loaned the money to purchase the first saw he used, and the goalie nets were hand crocheted by Edith Munro. Manufacturing was later done in a quonset building on Fairview Street just west of Guelph Line. The company was sold in 1968.
Crooker Bros and Co. Wire Works
This was purported to be, in 1877, “the only one of the kind on the continent of America and possibly of the globe, the wire turned out of this establishment being under a patent of which Messrs. Crooker are themselves the inventors.”
This was a process whereby after the wire was made, it was dipped to galvanize it for beauty and durability. The company went on to make fancy baskets from the wire.
The Burlington Bay Skyway Bridge
The original bridge completed in 1958, was the “largest bridge” built by the Ontario Department of Highways, and the “longest bridge” built in Canada up to that time. The centre span was 120 feet above the harbour entrance, it was 4.37 miles long consisting of 75 spans resting on 76 piers. It was operated as a toll 
bridge until 1974. To accommodate the increase in traffic volume, a twin bridge was completed in 1985.
Did you know?
Recycling
In early 1970, local citizen Roberta Golightly (who now goes by her maiden name, Roberta McGregor).was in a war on pollution. She engaged some other local women and established the Citizens Committee for Pollution Control (CCPC), which gained approval to begin a recycling pilot project in Burlington. “Canada’s first” recycling centre opened on Brant Street in Burlington in February 1971. Thus establishing Canada’s first sustained multi-material citywide recycling program.
Peaches
The first peaches grown in Canada were cultivated in Burlington, in the Grindstone Creek watershed. Although the origins of peaches are from China, European settlers brought them here.
Did the white line start here?
The first white line road marking dates back to 1918 in the United Kingdom. However, legend has it that Maxwell (M.C.) Smith (a fruit farmer with his father), who owned the first car in Burlington, a single cylinder Rambler, bought in 1902 and painted fire-engine red, claims he was responsible for the white lines on our highways!
He got the idea from his father, J.C. Smith who had painted the curb on the new Toronto to Hamilton highway along Lakeshore Road at Rambo Creek so that vehicles would not go astray in the fog on the sweeping bend in the road. Later discussion was about how to prevent cars from running into each other on the bend, so Max Smith painted a white line down the middle of the pavement in 1914. He went on to become Burlington’s first Mayor in 1919.
The Burlington Historical Society has the Display Case in front of City Hall on Brant Street, decorated for Heritage Week with “Burlington Innovations”. Stop by and have a look.
