Hawker Siddeley Canada was the Canadian unit of the Hawker Siddeley Group of the United Kingdom and manufactured railcars, subway cars, streetcars, aircraft engines and ships from the 1960s to 1980s.
Hawker Siddeley Canada focused on manufacturing heavy rail cars (hopper and tank cars) and transit vehicles (subway cars, intercity railcars and streetcars). Major clients included:
Hawker Siddeley Canada headquarters was in Mississauga, Ontario. Its formation in 1962 saw the company acquire control of several A.V. Roe Canada subsidiaries including the Canadian Car and Foundry (CC&F) as well as the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation (DOSCO) conglomerate, which included various steel mills, coal mines, manufacturing plants, and Halifax Shipyards. Consequently, Hawker Siddeley had two primary railcar manufacturing plants:
CC&F factory in Thunder Bay, Ontario, for manufacturing railway transit cars, and
DOSCO factory in Trenton, Nova Scotia, for manufacturing railway freight cars (TrentonWorks), along with the Trenton Forge - the largest forge in North America.
Hawker Siddeley forced its DOSCO subsidiary to close money-losing coal mines and steel mills, subsequently expropriated by the federal and Nova Scotia governments (see: Cape Breton Development Corporation and Sydney Steel Corporation). Likewise, CC&F was forced to shed various assets. Halifax Shipyards was sold to Irving Shipbuilding Inc., a subsidiary of J.D. Irving Limited, in the 1990s.
Hawker Siddeley Canada's operations were then acquired by Kingston-based UTDC (later sold to Bombardier Transportation of Montreal, Quebec). SNC-Lavalin purchased the railcar business but mothballed the TrentonWorks plant, which was later acquired by the Government of Nova Scotia and sold to Greenbrier. SNC-Lavalin sold the Thunder Bay plant to Bombardier Transportation and the Hawker Siddeley Canada name was ultimately dissolved in 2001.
Hawker-Siddeley Transportation also produced railway freight cars primarily for Canadian railways and leasing companies during the 1970s and 1980s at plants in Thunder Bay, Ontario and Trenton, Nova Scotia. Today the Thunder Bay plant is owned by Bombardier Transportation. The Trenton plant was sold in 1988 to Lavalin Industries and renamed TrentonWorks. The Greenbrier Companies acquired the plant in 1995 but during a serious contraction within the railcar sector in the mid 2000s closed the plant. The Thunder Bay plant primarily built passenger rail and transit equipment, while the Trenton plant built freight cars.
Covered Hopper Cars - for grain and other dry bulk commodities
