Click on photos to enlarge

 90 Ton punch press is used by Canadian Name Plate in its new Midland plant for blanking and forming stove and refrigerator panels and trim. Operated by one of the many female employees at the plant.

  A sample board in the front entrance of the Canadian Name Plate Co. Ltd. plant on Bay Street displays only a few of the hundreds of panels and trim manufactured for the automobile and appliance industry. Adding another item is employee Mrs. Dora Taylor.

 Foreman of the polishing department of Canadian Nameplate, Gordon Higgs is seen inspecting a piece of metal that has come out of the automatic polishing machine.

  Electroplating is one of the many operations carried out at the Canadian Name Plate  plant in Midland. Rudolph Pheiffer examines a rack of stove panels that he processed in the nickel tank.

 Ferric chloride acid is used for etching copper and brass at the plant. Art Miller, foreman of the etching department is checking a rack of samples.

 This big power off-set printing press is used for printing acid resisting ink onto sheet metal. Foreman in the white coat is Tom Boast.

  Bill Edwards displays his first Muskie which he caught off Present Island. Bill and his companion, former Midlander Brian Dunfield, were trolling when Bill caught this 43 inch 20 pound fish.

  Mount St. Louis school marches to the Coldwater Fall Fair, complete with their own clown.

  Pretty girls and pretty flowers at the Coldwater Fair. Miss Glenda Gill and Mrs. Iris Beach , both of Coldwater, admire the display of the Huronia Horticultural Society.

 Former Penetang councillor and WW 2 veteran Jack Robbins has been appointed plant superintendent at Canadian Name Plate, Midland.

 Near perfect circle formed by two large trees and lower shrubbery is plainly visible to north bound drivers on Highway 27 a mile south of Wyebridge.

 The museum’s Free Press negative collection begins in 1953, we started the blog in November of 1954, so we will include a few images of 1953/54 from time to time.

 March 1954. Midland Shearlings 25,000 square foot plant on Yonge Street E. is destroyed by a fire which started in a drying room, loss valued up to $250,000.00. Ninety people are out of work. Local partner and manger is Henry Bernick. The building was torn down in 1957.

 April 1954. Midland Red Wings hockey team pictured on the ice at the Midland Arena Gardens. Back home at 4:00 AM after winning the Junior “C” Championship in Ingersoll Friday night.  Back row, Jack Reid, Ken Webb, Homer Barrett, stick boy Barry Crawford, Murray Yorke, Jack Hendrickson, Ken Simms, Stan Ritchie, Middle row, Larry Reid, secretary Cliff Newburn, Bruce Calvert, Gerry Gerow, Bud Quinn, Don Hudson and Charlie York, kneeling; Mike Belejac team captain, Johnny Lizotte, Mervin James, trainer Harold Jackson. 

• Parking meters are coming off on October 15th for the winter season.
• Eight Midland streets got a face lift within the past week. Crushed stone and tar, “chip & tar”, have been applied to Hanley [sic] Street, Donalda, Ruby, William from Ruby to Hanley, Eighth to Dominion, Seventh to Hugel, Montreal to Seventh.
• Tay Township and Midland agree on sewage charges, Tay to pay for connecting the new MPDHS in Tay and residential lots on Hugel Ave. to the Midland system.
• CNR petitions the Board of Transportation Commissioners to remove the grade crossing warning device on Robert St. W., scene of a fatal accident last winter. Installed in 1915 when four passenger trains and two freights plus extras used the line daily, now reduced to one freight three times a week. Railway would replace the signal with manual flagging.
• Yeggs (burglars) steal $800.00 from two vaults in the Waubaushene general store of W.H.F. Russell and Sons.
• Midland Council opens four bids for sanitary landfill services, lowest bid for a five year contract was $6,495.00 annually. Bidders were Thomas Wilcox, Charles Morden, Herman Latanville and Charles Stewart. The proposed site is the old Letherby mill property. Council deferred action. [The dump eventually went to what is now Tiffin Park. The garbage was collected in trucks and was dumped over the edge of the south facing hill.]
• Five hundred Lamprey Eels and three thousand suckers were removed from the Sturgeon River this year by Robert Thomson working for the Department of Lands and Forests. Mr. Thomson noted that the eels are most active from sunset until 2 a.m. and when water temperatures are warmer.
• Toronto bridegroom spent his honeymoon in jail after being charged by Const. Murray Tamblyn with drunk driving. His bride and another couple spent the night in their car at a Fergusonvale garage.
• Shoe Corp. of America and Monsanto Canada form a new company, United Shoe Plastics Limited. It will lease office and manufacturing space in the planned expansion of the shoe factory on Elizabeth Street and employ a dozen persons initially.
• Twenty five thousands visitors tour the Huron Indian Village this summer reports the Midland Y’s Men’s Club.
• MPDHS board will pay the same for milk this year as it has since the school opened. Five tenders opened at Wednesday’s meeting all quoted the same price, 5 cents per half pint and 19 cents per quart. The dairies have been alternating on a monthly basis supplying the school.
• Midland Drive-In, their Monday – Tuesday special this week is free admission for lady drivers.
• Argue’s Meat Market, Midland and Victoria Harbour, is selling government inspected baby beef, front quarters .29 cents/lb and hind quarters .39 cents/lb.
• Effective this Saturday the chartered banks in North Simcoe will be raising the interest rate paid on savings accounts to 2-1/2 %.
• PUC secretary Stewart Holt tells the inaugural meeting  of the commission that water tests taken from the bay “were very bad” although Little Lake water consistently tested satisfactory. “Without a sewage treatment plant health officials will never allow the town to use bay water.” Staff were instructed to price the enlargment of the current reservoirs.