Thomas Russell automobile and hockey skate manufacturer
On my walk through Mount Pleasant Cemetery, I arrived at the mausoleum and discovered the family niche of automobile maker and President of Canadian Cycle and Motor (CCM), Thomas Russell.
In the early 1900s, CCM was struggling to sell bicycles. The company’s original owners—Walter Massey, Joseph Flavelle, and George Cox—recognized that they needed someone who understood both manufacturing and the promotion of bicycles.
They found their man in a young, energetic, and ambitious individual from a farming family in Exeter, Ontario: Thomas Russell.
When Russell took leadership at CCM, he quickly set about improving efficiency and expanding the company’s reach. Through stronger manufacturing practices and better marketing, he helped the company’s bicycles reach a wider market. Russell stabilized the company financially and guided it toward decades of growth, eventually helping CCM become Canada’s dominant bicycle manufacturer.
Russell’s ambition didn’t stop with bicycles. As the bicycle market began to decline, CCM purchased the assets of a failed car company, and Russell established the Russell Motor Car Company, naming it after himself and serving as its president.
Promoted as “The Thoroughly Canadian Car,” the Russell Motor Car Company manufactured automobiles in Toronto from around 1903 to 1915–1916. Although it lasted only about a decade, the Russell is often considered Canada’s first truly successful domestically built automobile, produced during the early years of the country’s auto industry.
Around 1905, when the bicycle market collapsed and factories were left idle during the winter, Russell came up with a clever solution: he used leftover steel from bicycle and automobile production to make skate blades, calling them “Automobile Skates.” At first, CCM made only the steel blades while shoemakers produced the boots, and customers bought the two pieces separately. Later, CCM partnered with boot makers so that the boot and blade were sold together.
For many hockey players, the skates they remember or still wear are Tacks skates made by CCM. George Tackaberry, a shoemaker and boot repairman based out of Brandon, Manitoba designed a stronger hockey boot using kangaroo leather, which resisted stretching, while reinforcing the heel and toe for better arch support. By 1927, CCM took over Tackaberry’s shop and began selling skates with CCM blades attached to Tackaberry boots, calling them “CCM Tacks.” and later worn by NHL greats, Jean Béliveau and Bobby Orr and millions of young Canadians.
Thomas Alexander Russell died in Toronto on December 29, 1940. He was 63.
1877-1940
See my related site and the original founders of CCM.
