Daisy heddon model 102 images
By then Daisy-Heddon had become a subsidiary of the Victor Comptometer Corp., a U.
The corporate history of the firm gets confusing in the 1970s. “He said to Lorne, ‘Come work for me in Preston.’ Lorne and his wife, Jean, went to visit Preston and fell in love with the small community. He had been working for National Grocers in Hamilton when he was recruited by his friend Norman Golightly. Suzanne Cline of Cambridge emailed to say her late father, Lorne Cline, was Daisy Canada’s purchasing manager for most of the 1960s. Thelma Ruth of Cambridge phoned to say she worked for a time at Daisy-Heddon, assembling pistol holsters, and remembers the Golightly brothers.
#Daisy heddon model 102 images pro
Stan Golightly was personnel and production manager for five years, then left in 1963 to pursue a career as a pro golfer. Ltd.īy the summer of 1963 Daisy Canada had a staff of 120 as it prepared for the Christmas season. 2, 1961, a Galt Evening Reporter story headlined “Daisy Manufacturing Buys Preston Furniture Factory” described how the two would move to 185 King St., the former home of Percy Hilborn’s Preston Furniture Co. In 1960, the Canadian arm of James Heddon’s Sons got started in the same building, under the same management.īoth firms grew rapidly and on Sept. And in 1958 he launched the Daisy Canada in the old Buffalo Sled Co. While searching for a plant site, Golightly checked out Preston. They agreed to this and gave Norm the job of setting up the whole operation.” He left them and approached Daisy USA to manufacture in Canada, thus avoiding duties on goods shipped to the British Empire. “He (Norman) was always a salesman and worked for a toy company called M.A.
“We moved to a farm near Eden Mills and later back to Toronto,” Golightly’s brother Stan said in an emailed note from Florida. firms they could expand sales by having a Canadian branch plant.īorn in Halifax, Golightly had been forced to leave high school before graduation when his father lost his job during the Depression. “My friend next door had a Daisy air rifle and I always wondered if it had been made in that very factory,” Guzik wrote.ĭaisy-Heddon was in Preston thanks to the efforts of its first general manager, Norman Golightly, who convinced the U.S. His parents, like many, wouldn’t let him have an air gun. Rick Guzik of Kitchener recalls passing the Daisy plant on visits to his grandparents in Brantford. I always wanted to take a tour of that business and see how they (the guns) were made, but never did.” Of course, that meant that we had to pass the Daisy building each time. “Back in the early and mid 1960s I was a member of the Preston Scout House Drum and Bugle Corps and my dad used to drive us (my brother was a member, too) to Preston three times a week for practice. Greg Payne of Kitchener emailed to say he still has the Daisy “Red Ryder” BB gun his father gave him in the 1950s. The latter used to make fishing rods and lures. The former still makes air guns and toys. of Rogers, Ark., and James Heddon’s Sons Ltd. The name Daisy-Heddon reflected that the plant held the Canadian arms of both the Daisy Manufacturing Co. And across the road was Grand Valley Auctions Ltd. Next door was Clare Brothers Ltd., the furnace maker.
It stood beside the Speed River at 185 King St. Last week’s “mystery” photo is a 1968 Record image of the Daisy-Heddon plant in the former town of Preston, now part of Cambridge. What Canadian boy growing up in the 1960s didn’t want a Daisy air gun - or at least want to try one? And if they looked closely at ads for the Daisy Manufacturing Co., they would see the firm had a Canadian plant in Preston, Ont.