Sawmill machinery maker Les Industries Desjardins Ltée is older than Canada, having been in business since 1865.

In 1917 they were also manufacturing gas engines.

Information Sources

• Thanks to correspondent Barry Larson for bringing this maker to our attention.
• The company website provides a brief history.

  Circa 1865, Charles Alfred Roy also know as Desjardins, son of a sailor family, was making the final tune up to a stationary thresher mill. Many inventors before him tried with little success to build a machine able to separate the grains from the ear. The thresher designed by Desjardins was able to do the job and had also an innovative function : it was also able to winnow the grain.

  The Desjardins' thresher mill was a mechanized way to do two steps of a before tedious work : the threshing, traditionnaly made by hand, using a flail to separage the grain from the ear and the winnowing, also made by hand, to remove the chaff and dirt by throwing the grain into the air and allowing the wind to blow away impurities.

  By the same time, Desjardins began building horse treadmill to provide the mechanical energy required by is new machines. Those invention came at the right moment : rural quebec's farming was beginning to mechanize and the demand for machines was important.

  In 1911, the Saint-André-de-Kamouraska's manufacture began the production of a stationnary gasoline motor. To cast the required parts, a foundry was opened.

  Since then, even if the company is still manufacturing farming and sawmill equipment, it specialized itself in the production of tanks for petroleum products..."

• Tremzaction, a Quebec-based used-machinery site, has a listing for a Desjardin shingle mill from 1974.
• A patent search turned up any one patent (American, Canadian, or European) assigned to this maker. The non-American searches only go back to about 1920.
• American Gasoline Engines Since 1872 by C. H. Wendel, Volume #1, 1983 page 129