The interconnections between this firm, Cant, Laidlaw & Co., MacGregor, Gourlay & Co., and Cant Bros. will make your head hurt. Our various sources completely contradict one another, and any non-period sources (including this website) should be viewed skeptically. The relationships between these companies are non-obvious, and so incomplete information leads to incorrect speculation.

This firm claimed to have been founded in 1872; our earliest certain data point is 1882; there is also an 1876 planer patent granted to Adam Cant and co-assigned to John Gourlay. It operated as the Galt Machine Works. The identity of the founding partners is somewhat uncertain but were most likely Adam Cant and John Gourlay. By about 1880 Cant was gone, but the company name did not change. In 1884 the partners were John Gourlay, Alex G. Gourlay, and Robert MacGregor. That same year there was a MacGregor, Gourlay & Fontaine Pin Co., which is believed to have operated out of the same premises. Also in business in 1884 was Cant, Laidlaw & Co., with Andrew Cant as a partner.

By 1886 the name Cant, Gourlay & Co. no longer existed, and neither did Cant, Laidlaw & Co. Appearing on the scene were MacGregor, Gourlay & Co. and Cant Bros. Our best guess is that a simple renaming took place, where Cant, Gourlay & Co. became MacGregor, Gourlay, & Co., and Cant, Laidlaw & Co. became Cant Brothers.

Information Sources

• Thanks to John Bartley for providing most of the period references listed here. This material necessitated a complete rewrite of the history given here, which had been based on secondary sources.
• The 1873 The Canadian Almanac has a text ad: "Galt Machine Works. Cant, Gourlay & Co., manufacturers of Wood-Working Machinery. Repairing in Mill Works, Engines, &c., carefully attended to. Works on East Side of North Water Street. A Cant, J. Gourlay, W. W. Laidlaw, J. Ross. Galt, Ontario."
• Canada Farmer for September 30, 1873, has a report on the Twenty-Eighth Annual Exhibition of the Ontario Agricultural and Arts Association. In the section on machinery, it says, "...the firm of Cant, Gourlay & Co. occupy a large building with a great variety of machines for wood-working, which they manufacture in their shops at Galt. There is a full staff of operatives, the machinery is driven by steam, and the work goes on with all the apparent care and despatch that are observed in a large factory devoted to business. Here are a planing, tenoning, and grooving machines, a moulding machine, a scroll saw tenoning machine, morticing machine, a mitreing machine; all going, and specimens of the work in view. The foregoing certainly form a spectacle whose equal has never been witnessed at any exhibition in Canada."
• The Authorized Catalogue of the First Annual Exhibition of the Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition Association of Toronto, held in September 1879, lists this firm as exhibiting a bandsaw, power mortiser, foot mortiser, 4-head moulding machine, single-head moulding machine, double planer-matcher, resaw, scrollsaw, shaper, tenoner, window-blind machine, ripsaw, gang ripsaw, door clamp, carriage cut-off saw, buzz planer, and saw abors. They also exhibited an iron-boring lathe.
• The National Archives of Canada apparently has a ca. 1882 holding entitled, "Galt Machine Works (foundry and machine shop-established 1872) Cant, Gourlay & Co. proprietors". We have never actually seen this item.
• Sessional Papers of Canada Parliament for 1882 lists some Galt companies and the number of employees in 1879 and 1881. For Cant, Gourlay & Co., they had 45 hands in both years.
• 1883 Farley's Directory of the Metal Workers of the United States, Canada and the British Provinces, page 186, lists Galt metalworking firms including Cant, Gourlay & Co., Machinsts and Cant, Laidlaw & Co., Machinists.
• Journal of the Legislative Council of the Province of New Brunswick for 1884 has a section, "Report on the Dominion and Centennial Exhibition held at St. John, N. B., in October 1883". Cant, Gourlay & Co. is listed as exhibiting the following, which won a Diploma and Silver Medal:
  • Sand papering machine,
  • Four side moulding machine,
  • Tenoning machine,
  • Scroll saw machine,
  • Buzz planer machine,
  • Window blind machine
  Band saw machine,
  • Boring machine,
  • Mitre machine,
  • Planing and matchine machine,
  • and other machines.
• The Waterloo County Gazetteer and Directory for 1884-5 lists "CANT, GOURLAY & CO (J and A G Gourlay and R MacGregor). Galt Machine Works, mnfrs wood working machinery and looms, Concession nr G W station". "G W" would be the Great Western railway. It also says, "The Galt Machine Works were established in 1872 and employ 80 hands in the manufacture of wood-working machinery and looms. Cant, Gourlay & Co." The same directory lists Cant, Laidlaw & Co., which proves that the two firms were in business at the same time.
• The Ontario Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1884-5 lists "Cant, Gourlay & Co. (Robert MacGregor, John & E [sic] Gourlay), machinists, Concession. It also lists Cant, Laidlaw & Co.
• A Cyclopedia of Canadian Biography, 1886, has this biography:

  Cant, John, Galt, was born in Rosshire, Scotland, on the 30th June, 1830. He came to Canada with his father, in 1843, settling at Galt; and here his father died in 1869, leaving a family of eleven children, John being the fourth. In Galt John Cant learned the trade of harness making, but about the year 1872 he gave up this business and entered as book-keeper in the firm of Cant, Gourlay & Co. Here he remained till 1881, when he entered into partnership with William Laidlaw, Hugh Cant and Andrew Cant, in the manufacture of woodworking machinery; and the operations of the house have since met with considerable success. In 1882, Mr. Cant was elected to the town council of Galt, and at the period of writing, is serving his third year in that body...

• The EAIA Directory of American Toolmakers lists this firm, with the following information:

  Cant and Alex G. Gourlay started using this name when two other partners who had worked with them 1864-1875 retired; the name used earlier is not known but may have simply been the Galt Machine Works which this company was also known as. ["Galt Machine Works" refers to the factory, and, as was common at the time, the factory name and the business name were used somewhat interchangeably.] It became MacGregor, Gourlay Co. Their products included a hand operated miter trimmer. The Cant is thought to be Andrew who later formed the Lancaster machine & Knife works in NY.

• A page at the University of Western Ontario library website gives a biography of Canada Machinery Corp., Ltd. (CMC). The history in that article is generally at variance with the verifiable facts.