vintage toronto daily mail ad of the day

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Vintage Ad #1,183: Brunner Mond

Every so often in the midst of scrolling through reels of microfilm at the Toronto Public Library, I'll find an ad or story with loose connections to Amherstburg. While researching the coverage of the death of Sir John A. Macdonald in Toronto's newspapers, I came across this ad for a company who, just over a quarter of a century later, became one of Amherstburg's largest employers.

Built between 1917 and 1919, the Brunner Mond soda ash plant provided Amherstburg with both jobs and an improved water supply thanks to a filtration facility the company built. Later known as Allied Chemical and General Chemical, the plant operated until 2005. The Brunner Mond name lives on in a boat launch along the Detroit River (Bru Mon Harbour Marina, formerly used by plant employees as the Brunner Mond Yacht Club) and a side street near the plant where the company once built homes for its employees (Brunner Avenue).

Note that the Mail had a header specially made for advertisers in the alkali business.

Source: The Toronto Daily Mail, June 10, 1891. - JB

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