In 1856, William Kennedy, a thirty-five-year-old Scottish millwright from Smith Falls, arrived to install machinery in the Harrison Woollen and Grist Mills. ... In 1857, he began a venture which would have a great impact on Owen Sound for the next one and a half centuries! In that year Kennedy started a planing and matching mill. Due to his drive, determination and skill, the business expanded and was enormously successful. Six years later in 1863, because of an ever-expanding market, Kennedy found it necessary to erect a large, two-storey factory. One floor was dedicated to the sash and door business, while the other floor housed a new machine shop.
Kennedy realized that Owen Sound was one the verge of becoming a dynamic Great Lakes port. In order to meed the needs of this perceived market, the ambitious Scotsman added a new facet to his already booming enterprise. He began manufacturing equipment for fishing, passenger, freight and pleasure vessels.
In 1867, in the year of Confederation, following the expansion of the original Kennedy Planing and Matching Mill, William Kennedy renamed his company Wm. Kennedy and Sons. Throughout the next 25 years, Kennedy expanded his operations to include the manufacture of machinery for saw, grist and flour mills. By the end of 1884, the company had moved from its location by the mill dam to First Avenue West, near the Corbet Machine Shop which had been established on First Avenue West by George Corbet and his four sons in 1851.
William Kennedy died in 1885, at the age of 64. However, this did not mean an end to the Kennedy dynasty as Matthew Kennedy took over his father's business.
Possessing similar entrepreneurial drive and determination, the younger Kennedy continued in his father's footsteps. Also keenly interested in the development of his community, Matthew served for several years on the town council and on two occasions, 1885 to 1886 and 1907 to 1908, was elected to the position of mayor. In 1899, he set up a steel foundry. By 1911, Wm. Kennedy and Sons had grown from an essentially, one-man operation to employ 150 area residents in the manufacture of such products as turbines, mill gearings, steel castings and propellers. With the onset of World War I, Kennedys became important contributors to the allied war effort. The March 2, 1915 edition of the Owen Sound Times reported that the company had received an order to manufacture 25,000 shells for the Canadian army.
The Kennedy operation continued to expand. In 1916, Matthew Kennedy bought and merged the Owen Sound Iron Works into his operations. Three years later, he purchased the Canadian Malleable Iron Works located on the east shore of Owen Sound's harbour. Expansion during the 1920s helped the company survive the Depression which swept North America, forcing many other companies to close.
The Second World War saw the company fortunes boom. The foundry produced propellers for the Canadian Merchant Marine as well as for merchant vessels in countries such as China and Brazil. Most naval vessels used by the Allied forces had propellers manufactured in Owen Sound.
In 1951, almost a century after William Kennedy had begun his pioneering venture in the small community of Owen Sound, the company was sold to had-Mil (Canada) Limited, a division of the Sheffield, England, Millspaugh Corporation. A decade later the company was once again sold, the new owner being Black Clawson Ltd., an Ohio-based company.
Today, due to corporate "down-sizing" and "contracting-out," the company which once employed hundreds of Owen Sounders, has ceased operations. The once mighty foundry furnaces on the banks of the Sydenham River lie silent, an obvious reminder of an era when the clang of metal being forged for customers all over the world could be heard twenty-four hours a day.