Canadian radios

I’ve often discussed Canadian auto manufacturing and the standard myths. I hadn’t noticed the equivalent in radios before. The American Radio Library has added a few issues of a Canadian trade journal for radio and appliance dealers from the early ’50s.

Canadian carmakers started out semi-independent and quickly converged to fully owned divisions of US companies.

Canadian appliances and radios had the same overall mix as cars with one exception.

Most were just US-made products sold in Canada.

Some were Canadian divisions with their own brands and variations.

Canada also preferred British brands in both cars and radios, again with a mix of pure and rebrands. Canada had the advantage here. British cars were inferior to American, but British radios and TVs were better. Electronics started in England and stayed ahead of ours into the 1970s.

What’s different from the auto situation? Several fully independent radio and appliance makers were still going strong in the ’50s.

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Ads show the spectrum.

Triplett, a purely US name sold but not made in Canada.

Addison made and rebranded Norge products.

Coleman, like Plodge and Cheviac, had its own products alongside the US.

Beatty was a full-line maker of appliances.

Standard proudly made signal boosters for distant TV reception, necessary in the wide-open prairie provinces.

Electrohome was another full-line maker.

I included this for aptronymic value.

Fleetwood, another full-line maker.

Marconi, a Canadian division of a British company, building US Clarostat resistors.

And here’s the ultimate in Canadian-style independence. A Canadian-made multimeter with a British name. Brits called them AVOmeters for Amps Volts Ohms. Americans call them VOMs for Volts Ohms Milliamps. (Meters were often a national specialty.)

Finally, the official declaration of independence. Canada had its own patent pool, serving as a union and defender against the elephant to the south, just as the Selden pool served as a union and defender against Ford for smaller American auto companies.