Dominion Textile Company : The Dominion Textile Company Limited was chartered on January 4th 1905. It was created through the merger of four independent textile firms: Dominion Cotton Mills Company Limited, Merchants Cotton Company Limited, Colonial Printing & Bleaching Company Limited, and the Montmorency Cotton Mills Company Limited. Based in Montreal, the venture was backed by well-known businessmen Herbert Holt, Vincent Meredith, Honourable Robert Mckay, David Morrice and J.P. Black with David Yuile as the company's first president. Dominion Textile would grow to become Canada's most significant textile manufacturer.
Dominion Textile's establishment in 1905 was the end result of a series of mergers which had begun in the industry in the 1880s. Alexander F. Gault and David Morrice unsuccessfully attempted to control the industry through marketing cartels, and later began to acquire and consoldiate smaller firms. Their actions had a direct impact on the creation of Dominion Textile and its corporate direction. However, a small number of shareholders in both the Dominion Cotton Mills Co. and Merchants Cotton Co. resisted the merger which created the company. The Privy Council decision, rendered in 1917, ruled in favour of Dominion Textile and finally gave the company complete control over its assets.
At its formation, Dominion Textile operated 11 mills which produced both griege cotton and finished cotton cloth for the Canadian market. Company success depended upon the protection of government tariffs, and on the co-ordination of mill operations. Both processes began in earnest in 1909 when Charles Gordon became President and appointed F.G. Daniels as his general manager. Gordon would play an important role in lobbying for protective tariffs, while Daniels reorganized company operations. Daniels improved the larger mills and closed the smaller and less profitable mills, including Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1910 and Moncton, New Brunswick in 1914.
As Dominion Textile consolidated its position in the Canadian market, the company began to expand. In 1906, the Dominion Textile Board of Directors acquired control of the Penman Manufacturing Company and renamed the company Penmans Limited. Although its activities remained distinct from the parent company until the 1960s, Dominion Textile executives were closely involved in all of Penmans' major decisions. Dominion Textile also assumed managerial control of the Montreal Cotton Company in 1911, beginning an acquisition process which would last until 1948.
In 1922, the Dominion Textile Company Ltd. sold its assets to a newly created company, Dominion Textile Limited (subsequently renamed Dominion Textile Incorporated). The financial reorganization funded new directions in corporate development including experimentation with rayon fibres and the manufacture of tire cord. In 1928, shortly after F.G. Daniels became company president, Dominion Textile acquired two tire cord plants and created new subsidiary firms, the Sherbrooke Cotton Company and the Drummondville Cotton Company.
Throughout the Depression, company profits and production remained stable. In 1933, when Sir Charles Gordon became president for a second time, Dominion Textile controlled 38% of the Canadian cotton market. When the sales of its allied firm, Montreal Cottons were factored in, Dominion Textile actually controlled 48% of the market. In spite of such secure footing, protective tariffs remained a key issue, as demonstrated by the sudden closure of its rayon plant in Sherbrooke in 1936. Dominion Textile threw more than 1000 people out of work to protest unrestricted Japanese imports. The incident resulted in the 1937 Royal Commission on the Textile Industry which severely criticized the company for its reliance on tariffs. The closure also resulted in a breakdown in labour relations. That relationship would remain strained until the 1970s, and would result in several serious strikes, including the lengthy 1946 strike in the Valleyfield mills.
In 1939, G. Blair Gordon, son of Sir Charles, became Dominion Textile's new president. He led the company through the intense production of the Second World War, when 70% of company production went directly to the military or other essential wartime services. At this time, textile manufacturing became Quebec's leading industry in terms of employment, wages & value of product.
In the post-war years Dominion Textile's operations changed to keep pace with industry and societal changes. Under the guidance of managing director F.R. Daniels (who became president in 1961), the company launched a massive modernization program in the 1950s, to replace war worn machinery with newly developed technology. Old mills, like the Hochelaga plant, were closed, while larger mills in Montreal, Sherbrooke and Valleyfield were upgraded. A new head office was constructed in Montreal to symbolize Dominion Textile's wartime triumph and to accommodate future growth.
In the 1960s, corporate philosophy began to evolve in an effort to keep pace with changes in consumer buying patterns. Led by E.F. King, the corporate management structure was broken down and decentralized. Marketing assumed a new importance and began to dictate production requirements. The company expanded production of synthetic fibres, opening new mills in Richelieu, Quebec and Long Sault, Ontario in order to remain competitive in the industry. The pattern of diversification would define the corporate growth pattern for the next two decades.
When E.F. King became president of Dominion Textile in 1966, he established the pattern of selecting the new president from the Marketing Division. Dominion Textile's two subsequent presidents, R.H. Perowne (1969) and T.R. Bell (1974) were both Marketing vice presidents. These three men continued Dominion Textile's diversification program through the acquisition of competitor firms or the creation of new subsidiaries. Under their guidance, Dominion Textile exploited many of the industry trends, investing in doubleknits, carpets, carpet backings, nonwovens, geotextiles, denim fabrics and interlinings. Perhaps the most significant acquisition was DHJ Industries in 1975. Using DHJ's international sales and distribution network, Dominion Textile evolved from a company which manufactured for the Canadian market into a multinational corporation with assets all over the world.
Dominion Textile reorganized its Canadian operations in the 1980s to function in tandem with the international holdings, and to prepare for increased competition under Free Trade. Canadian facilities were grouped into four separate divisions: industrial, apparel, consumer products and sales yarn. Their production lines were consolidated, resulting in the closure of several mills. Increased global competition, however, battered the Canadian plants. C.H. Hantho (president, 1989) began to restructure the textile giant in the early 1990s. More Canadian mills closed, and the company sold many of its assets. In 1997, two years after J.A. Boland became president, Dominion Textile was bought by American investors.
