Allied Shipbuilders

Founded in 1948 by Arthur McLaren (1919-1999), Allied Shipbuilders is one of the older continually operating commercial shipyards on the Pacific Coast of North America.

Located at the mouth of the Seymour River in North Vancouver, the company provides shipbuilding, ship repair, and engineering services to ferries, fish boats, tugs and barges that operate on the Pacific Coast.

The demand for wartime cargo-ship orders provided the incentive for a group of Vancouver businessmen to set up a four-berth shipyard in False Creek, Vancouver, British Columbia,[1] on a site where the J. Coughlan & Sons shipyard had operated during the First World War and where the Athlete's Village for the 2010 Winter Olympics was built between 2006 and 2010.

By war's end, West Coast Shipbuilders had launched 55 Fort and Park ships—the Canadian equivalent to the Liberty Ship.

[2] After the war, West Coast built a number of fuel barges for Northern Transportation Co. Ltd. for service on the MacKenzie River to the Arctic and the M.V.

Allied Builders initially focused on constructing small steel tugs at a time in the region when most were built of wood.

[3] In 1967, Allied left False Creek, establishing a larger shipyard just east of the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, where it continues to operate to this day.

Now primarily a repair yard, Allied has constructed 259 hulls during its history, including fish boats, tugs, log barges, ferries, off-shore supply vessels, Arctic icebreakers and harbour-patrol ships.

In the four years prior to his purchase of the firm, he managed projects valued in excess of $50 million on behalf of Allied Shipbuilders.