Westinghouse Supply Joins CEDA – 1957

May 28, 2020

History was made in 1957. After more than five years of discussions concerning admission of the “big three” national companies (Canadian General Electric Company Ltd., Northern Electric Co. Ltd., Canadian Westinghouse Supply Company Ltd.) into membership of CEDA, on January 15, 1957, Canadian Westinghouse Supply Company Ltd. Was admitted to membership. (Shown in photo, L-R: Lionel Cote, Mrs. Cote, Bill Legallais, Norm Franks, Jack Sharpe, Mrs. Barnhouse and Harry Horsman.)

On the admission of Canadian Westinghouse Supply Company to the CEDA membership, past president Don Hughes recalls:

“When Westinghouse Supply entered Canada through the purchase of Chadwicks Electric in Hamilton they had requested that they be allowed to carry on Chadwick’s CEDA membership. There was much debate at that time between our members as to the advisability of mixing ‘national’ philosophies with ‘independent’ operations and the possible loss of ‘independent’ members’ influence in the overall CEDA structure. After establishing limited ‘national’ voting control and concluding that the wholesale industry could benefit from the expertise of both types of operations, the Westinghouse application was approved.

We maintained an open door policy for the acceptance of new members, provided they met our standards of operation. In November of 1957 several prospective members were invited to a monthly CEDA meeting in Montreal. In reviewing The Association’s activities that were to their benefit, I reported that over the past five years CEDA had been able to negotiate improved distributor discounts, many 2 percent cash discount terms, and had active committees working on industry problems: that we comprised 68 member companies with a total sales volume of 150 million dollars, and were averaging five new member companies each year.”

Source: CEDA: Fifty Years of Service – An Historical Review of the Canadian Electrical Distributors Association, 1934 to 1984, Kerrwil Publications. Please feel free to reach out to us any time if you have great photos, historical anecdotes or perspectives. We would love to hear from you; linegoyette@kerrwil.com.