Cornwall Electric
Cornwall Street Railway Light and Power Company Limited, operating as Cornwall Electric, is an electricity transmission and distribution utility, licensed by the Ontario Energy Board to operate in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. Originally established in 1887 as the Stormont Electric Light and Power Company and merged with the Cornwall Electric Street Railway Company in 1905, it is one of the oldest utilities in Canada.
The company supplies electricity to approximately 25,365 customers in the city of Cornwall, the townships of South Glengarry and South Stormont, and on a portion of the Mohawk people's territory of Akwesasne, all located in Eastern Ontario. It crosses provincial boundaries to obtain the bulk of the power it requires directly from Hydro-Québec, while generating a small amount of its own, using a cogeneration system, a first such use in Canada.
Thomas Edison visited Cornwall in 1883 to see his electric incandescent light system illuminate a local factory. The incorporation of the Stormont Electric Light and Power Company followed in 1887. Since then, the company has undergone several ownership changes during its history, transitioning from a private company to a municipally owned utility to one that is owned and operated by a multinational publicly traded company.
History
Name
Cornwall Electric is the amalgamation of two companies that were first established in the late 19th century in Cornwall, Ontario, Canada. Stormont Electric Light & Power Company, which was formed in 1887 to supply Cornwall with electric light, and the Cornwall Electric Street Railway Company, which incorporated in 1896 after receiving a franchise to operate a street car service in Cornwall.In 1905, the two businesses merged under the name Cornwall Street Railway Light and Power Company Limited, which was a combination of the two original business names. Even though the company eventually divested itself of all of its railroad operations, it has retained its full corporate name.
In 1972, the company branded itself with the orange "CE" logo and continued doing business as Cornwall Electric. While the company was attempting to incorporate provincially using the name Cornwall Electric, a newer company which manufactured small electric appliances, was also incorporating federally with the same name. Executives from both companies held meetings and made arrangements that allowed the utility, which had proceeded further in obtaining the name, to continue operating as Cornwall Electric. It agreed to provide the other firm with compensation for any problems that arose after it decided to forgo the use of the name Cornwall Electric in lieu of another.
Early years
In the early 1880s, the owners of the Canada Cotton Manufacturing Company invited employees of Thomas Edison to Cornwall, to install the inventor's direct current system of incandescent lights, to illuminate their new weaving shed. H.M. Billsby, director of the project, hired local Cornwall workers, including John MacMillan and Wilbur Reuben Hitchcock, who installed six boilers, six generators, and one hundred carbon filament bulbs connected in series and suspended from the shed's ceiling. Edison himself went to Cornwall on April 4, 1883, for the weaving shed's opening, as did politicians, scientists, industrial leaders, and dignitaries. He activated the system and saw for the first time in Canada, factory illumination using his patented invention of electric incandescent lights. This was a significant development in the utilisation of electricity in industrial and commercial applications.John MacMillan was placed in charge of the generators at the textile mill by H.M. Billsby, and after two years there, he went on to install generators at various locations for the Edison Company, which became part of the General Electric Company. He returned to Cornwall to work for Stormont Electric before purchasing his own electric shop.
W.R. Hitchcock, who in 1883 at the age of twenty-one, moved to Cornwall from Massena, New York, worked as an electrician for the Edison Company for a few years, and later joined Billsby who became the first manager of the Westinghouse Electric Company. He became a partner at the construction firm Glover, Davis and Hitchcock of New York, installing plants for Westinghouse that produced electricity using an alternating current, which allowed it to travel longer distances, compared to Edison's DC system.
During a visit to his Cornwall home, Hitchcock convinced a group of local businessmen and the directors of Stormont Electric to invest in an electric company that made use of the Westinghouse system. His company reached a formal agreement with them on April 19, 1887, to install 650 incandescent electric lamps on the streets of Cornwall. The directors of Stormont Electric had agreed to use their influence to secure tax exemptions for the power plant, a right-of-way for Hitchcock's company to string wires on poles throughout the town, and to obtain a right-of-way from the federal government to lay wires across the Cornwall Canal.
Incorporation
As requested by Stormont Electric, the town council passed a by-law on April 22, 1887, to give the company the exclusive right to erect poles and string wires for the distribution of electricity across the town for fifteen years and a tax exemption on the personal and real property of the company for a period of ten years. Stormont Electric then filed for incorporation with the provincial government as a joint-stock company, valued at $25,000. Company solicitors also prepared a deed of purchase for the use of the water-power plant in a building on land used for a gristmill, controlled by David Hodge. It was passed on to him by his father Andrew Hodge, who years earlier, purchased the mill, which included federal water rights on the Cornwall Canal.In September 1887, Hitchcock obtained title to his company's electric plant and agreed to operate it for one year and to give the directors of Stormont Electric options to purchase the operation before being free to sell it to anyone else. In October of that year, Hitchcock borrowed $5,000 from them to pay his bills, and unable to repay the ten-month loan, he forfeited ownership of his power plant to Stormont Electric.
Expansion and control
On December 1, 1893, the directors of Stormont Electric decided to operate the Cornwall Gas Works Company, when the shareholders, seeing it as a potential rival, had agreed to purchase the company. After being in abeyance for several years, the High Court of Justice for Ontario issued a final order of foreclosure on April 13, 1890. Once the terms and conditions of the purchase were finalized, Stormont Electric purchased the company in 1895, for $13,000. An Act that passed in the provincial legislature of Ontario provided Stormont Electric with the necessary permission to operate Cornwall Gas Works, allowing it to manufacture and sell gas for light, power, and heat in the town and township of Cornwall and to increase the value of its capital stock by $50,000.Facing an increasing demand for electricity, the directors of Stormont Electric decided to build a new coal-powered steam plant to supply power when the Cornwall Canal had an insufficient amount of water to turn the water wheels fast enough to generate electricity. To finance the project, which included a new boiler, engine house, and approximately 150 tons of soft coal to power the steam engines, the directors secured a $10,000 loan against the company's property and equipment from James N. Stuart, an investment agent from Montreal, Quebec.
During the 1896 yearly municipal elections, the incumbent mayoral candidate M. M. Mulhern had proposed expropriation of the water and electric utilities. Stormont Electric was able to escape the idea of expropriation, which had been deemed inappropriate at the time by William Hodge, a candidate for Reeve and a former director of Stormont Electric.
Five years later, in 1901, Cornwall had assumed control of the waterworks and formed a special investigative committee to determine whether it would be more economical to build a new electric plant or acquire the gas and electric plants operated by Stormont Electric. After receiving the committee's report, which favoured purchasing the two plants, the town council provided Stormont Electric with a formal offer to purchase the plants and related assets for $50,000 on November 27, 1901, giving the directors one month to decide before withdrawing the offer. The offer was declined, and to show its displeasure, the town council decided not to renew the agreement it already had with Stormont Electric and instead placed the street lighting services it provided up for tender.
To help with the planning, specifications, and bid proposals, the town council enlisted the services of W.R. Hitchcock. Cornwall Electric Street Railway, which also produced electricity, did not bid on the tender. It was reorganizing itself and facing a corporate takeover by the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, which did not want to participate in the tendering process. The remaining bids were from Stormont Electric and St. Lawrence Power Company, with the latter having strong connections with the federal Conservative government, which had awarded it lucrative contracts, including one to bring power to the Cornwall Canal to operate the locks and to furnish it with lights. After much deliberation and finding the St. Lawrence bid too high and reluctant to build a new plant, the town council reversed itself by signing a ten-year contract with Cornwall Electric on June 4, 1902.
To support its growth, Stormont Electric also signed a contract to purchase additional power from St. Lawrence Power on October 26, 1903, which included an agreement to build a power step-down transformer station on its property south of the Cornwall Canal and a commitment from St. Lawrence Power that it would not supply power to individuals or corporations in Cornwall, excluding the Canadian Coloured Cotton Mills, and to not supply power to villages surrounding Cornwall.