Canadian Industries Limited

In order to provide the massive amounts of explosives needed to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, a new dynamite factory was opened in McMasterville, Quebec.

Another major ancestor was the Dominion Cartridge Company, started at Brownsburg, Quebec (just west of Montreal) in 1886 by Captain A. L. ("Gat") Howard, who introduced the Gatling gun into Canada and operated a battery of two of the new weapons during the Riel Rebellion.

This was a major supplier to the Canadian Expeditionary Force during World War I, which led to the building of a new factory in the newly christened Nobel, Ontario in 1914.

[citation needed] During the 1920s they diversified into paint and varnish, coated fabrics and plastics and changed their name in 1927 to Canadian Explosives Ltd. (CEL).

[1] With the approach of World War II, the company formed a subsidiary in September 1939 called Defence Industries Limited.

A cannon shell factory (and the entire nearby town itself) was built at Ajax, Ontario (nicknamed "Dilville").

[citation needed] On 3 May 1944, a CIL sulfuric acid plant in Sudbury, Ontario was certified as unionized by Mine-Mill Local 598.

[5] A great post-war building program geared C-I-L to meet peacetime needs for explosives, paints, agricultural and industrial chemicals, plastics, sporting ammunition and man-made textile fabrics.

In 1954 C-I-L was divided into two separate companies in accordance with the ruling of a U.S. court which had ordered E. I. du Pont de Nemours (today's DuPont) to end its joint interests with Imperial Chemical Industries Limited (ICI).