Brothers Jim and Grant MacDonald moved to Winnipeg from Nova Scotia in 1904 to start a sheet metal business.

Their location at the centre of the country lowered the average travel cost for aircraft to the factories, as well as providing aviation jobs in the Canadian west.

The company was an important supplier of accessories for jet engines, building the exhaust pipes for the Avro CF-100 Canuck and later becoming the primary maintenance depot for the aircraft.

During the 1950s and 60s Bristol built on their experience in precision sheet metal work to become a major supplier of hot section components for various engine manufacturers.

In the second half of the 1950s Bristol was selected to build several test rocket airframes for CARDE's ongoing research into high-power solid fuel propellants.

After initial research completed in the early 1960s, Bristol started selling a "lightened" version of the test vehicle as the Black Brant for sounding rocket use and opened the Rockwood Propellant Plant in 1962.

A purchase by the Royal Air Force for rocket motors was completed recently along with the sale of 200 redundant launchers that were in long-term storage.

Maj Andre Seguin, then a flight commander with 444 Tactical Helicopter Squadron out of Lahr, West Germany conceived the wire protection system following a fatal wirestrike.

Afterward Bristol was contracted to sell off the redundant aircraft to other interested air forces and offered to include a major upgrade to the avionics system.

Bristol brokered a deal in 1996 for the purchase of ten single-seat and three dual-seat CF-5s by the Botswana Defence Force, but this was the only sale to be made.