Kitchen Stove Manufacturing in Canada: A Time-Honoured Tradition
In the nineteenth century, the design of kitchen stoves used to cook food evolved through changes to stoves used for heating. It is likely that old, lavishly decorated cast-iron fireboxes, like those produced by the Forges du Saint-Maurice in the eighteenth century, inspired the creation of new models with additional parts — ovens and cooking surfaces — in which the two functions of either cooking or warming food were clearly separate.
Ironmasters of the time, including Joseph Van Norman of Normandale Iron Works in Long Point, Ontario, James Rogers Armstrong of the Toronto City Foundry, and Henri Bernier of the fonderie Bernier in Lotbinière, obtained patents for the manufacture of cooking stoves. Stoves from the Montreal Foundry and City Works, A. Bélanger Limitée in Montmagny, the Gurney Foundry Company Limited in Hamilton, and the McClary Manufacturing Company in London, were highly praised in advertisements.
