In 1991 when Bill Verity decided to locate his manufacturing enterprise in Brantford, Ontario and to name it CROWN VERITY, he was merely tieing into a tradition that has witnessed a century-long business connection between the Verity family and that southern Ontario city.
The link between the city and family began in 1892 with the arrival in Brantford of W.H. Verity & Sons, a flourishing manufacturing concern that had produced cultivating instruments and plows in Exeter, Ontario since 1857 and had garnered a nation-wide reputation for its products based on perseverance, integrity and courtesy. Just after its arrival in Brantford in 1892, the firm's name was changed to the Verity Plow Co. and the business became affiliated with the Massey-Harris Company, thus allowing it access to the worldwide markets of the Massey firm.After a disastrous fire in 1897 that destroyed much of the plant, the company rebuilt in Brantford and continued to grow until, at its peak, it had a payroll consisting of over 700 employees. In 1914 the Massey-Harris Company became the sole owners of the Verity Plow Company but even as that transaction was being played out, another Brantford business, with which the Verity family would have a strong connection, was putting down roots. In 1910, the Crown Electrical Manufacturing Company had been incorporated and became the first company in Canada to manufacture lighting fixtures, fireplace assemblies, portable table lamps and brass art ware. Its reputation for quality and workmanship led to a success that was reflected in its Canada-wide markets, its increased sales, and in its rapid growth from 30 to 125 employees just eight years later.In 1936, within three weeks of being forced into bankruptcy by the effects of the Great Depression, a new charter was obtained by a group of local men under the name of Crown Electrical Manufacturing Limited, with P.E. Verity as its president. It was an office which two more members of the Verity family, Morley and Jack, would eventually hold. The company continued to struggle during the remainder of the 30's but war contracts for component parts for Mosquito aircraft during the Second World War kept it afloat. After the war, it successfully returned to the manufacturing of lamps and fixtures for markets across the country. A major shift in direction took place in 1951, when the business decided to diversity and become a distributor of commercial restaurant appliances such as dishwashers and popcorn and hot dog machines. Then, almost one hundred years after his namesake arrived in Brantford, Bill Verity, who had worked at Crown Electric for his father Jack, sensing that he could build a better mousetrap in the form of an improved commercial barbecue, launched CROWN VERITY, a company whose name and location link it to its past connections with the Verity family and with Brantford.
Along with the location and name, CROWN VERITY has copied other features of successful Verity-run companies of the past, such as a unique, state-of-the-art product, extensive markets throughout North America and a reputation for quality to back the company motto "OUR REPUTATION IS STAINLESS". |
