MADE IN HAMILTON
20TH CENTURY
INDUSTRIAL TRAIL

SITE 25
FROST WIRE FENCE COMPANY, 1904
FROST FENCE AND WIRE PRODUCTS

After the turn of the 20th century this area around Sherman Avenue north was well known as the city's "manufacturers' annex". U.S.-born Henry L. Frost moved his small Welland fence plant here in 1904 to be closer to raw materials and electricity. Many of the original buildings of the Frost Wire Fence Company still stand along the north side of Princess Street stretching east from the corner of Sherman Avenue.

At first, operations were in a single, two-storey building. A few years later, the growing business added wire drawing and galvanizing mills. By 1918, the company - now the Frost Steel and Wire Company - produced the first chain-link fencing in Canada. Four years later it bought the Banwell-Hoxie Fence Company, located directly behind the Frost plant on Princess Street. Stelco took over the company in 1937. The Frost Works are now owned by the Advanced Fence and Manufacturing Company of Brampton.

Wilbert O'Hanley started work here in 1913 as a helper underneath the plant's giant fence looms. A year later he began working the looms. The loom was a big, noisy piece of machinery. Its great spindles would weave a wire mesh which was locked into place using patented Frost tight-locks. By 1958, O'Hanley had spun enough farm fencing to circle the entire globe-and then some.

Frost workers are organized as United Steelworkers of America Local 3561.