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Toronto City Directory 1896, 1900, 1910
I copied these from microfilm at the City of Toronto Archives. The Toronto City Directory was the White & Yellow Pages of its day (but without phone numbers). I looked at pages from the directories of 1896, 1900, and 1910 because I was interested to see the list of bicycle manufacturers before, during, and after the 1890s boom. There were 19 manufacturers in 1896, 38 in 1900, and only 6 in 1910. The usual ones are listed, and some interesting ones. Has anyone heard of the Alex. Kay Cycle Co.? - listed at 320 Queen East in 1900 and 1910. An added bonus is the addresses. CCM gave theirs as 43 Front West in 1900 and 151 Bay in 1910.
At some point I will return and search later years to see if I can find the first year that Humphrey appears (unless someone already knows and can tell me). I can take requests for specific years from anyone interested.
I added the black lines and arrows in the margins.
nice info
wonder, when businesses started listing phone numbers in TO
Joe has a KAY sprocket. He posted about it on here a year ago or so.
Go to CANADIAN VINTAGE BICYCLES heading and scroll down near the bottom for Joe's
post about KAY.
It was actaul about 7 months ago.
Very cool pages ! Thanks for posting them.
I sold a Alex Kay Paint stripping kit at the Brantford meet last week in the box.Early 1900.s.
Regarding Albert E. Humphrey, he started out in watch cases circa 1894 before diversifying into hardware and bicycles circa 1903. He may have been involved in bicycles to a lesser extent prior to that, but 1903 was the year that the company name changed from Humphrey Watch Case Co. to Humphrey Bicycles & Hardware Co. Hardware was dropped from the company name circa 1913 and by the following year, he had changed locations from Queen St. to Bulwer. Circa 1922 he added motorcycles, changing the name to Humphrey Bicycle & Motor Co. I have yet to find any information substantiating manufacture. Everything up to 1922 indicates a retail business.
I remember that Kay chainring post now, thanks, and had another read just now. It would be nice to see bikes with badge names like OK, Wanderer or Tangent. Does anyone have an obscure Canadian make hiding in their collection that they haven't posted photos of yet? If the bikes are extinct, maybe there's a badge in someone's colleciton. It would be nice to see some of these rare bikes.
yeah T-Mar, my 1920's Humphrey badge says: Humphrey Bicycle & Motor Co. Toronto, ON
anyone have a pre-1922 Humphrey?
Interesting that in 1896 and 1910, Hyslop is listed in manufacturers, but only in bicycles in 1900
and Ken, we were having a discussion about my Toronto, The Stearns!
The Stearns is only listed in bicycles in 1896, but in 1900 they moved to the manufacturer and also still in the bicycle sections
The directories have entries for Stearns from 1895-1900 inclusive. They are listed as a manufacturer as early as 1896. Stearns was absorbed by National, which was subsequently purchased by CCM in late 1900. There was also a Toronto manufacturerd by the Toronto Bicycle Exchange, circa 1895-1896.
interesting, thanks T-Mar
was looking for this kind of info, to be able to document my Toronto The Steans and my Toronto National
thanks
Max, as mentioned I can take requests if you want to see specific years.
don't need any particular years, thanks
Thanks T-Mar. It sounds like you have access to the Directories, or have seen them in the past, but I will poke around the post-1910 years and if I find anything useful on Humphrey I'll post it here.
Yes, I've researched and consildated everything from the 1895-1908 and 1912-1914 directories.
Humphrey's history is murky to say the least. Given that they eventually became a CCM subsidiary , one would think that they were at least an assembly operation, but I've yet to find any evidence of this prior to the CCM acquisition or even when CCM actually took over, other than it was prior to the end of WWII. Unfortunately, Humphrey and his wife appear to have been childless, so there are no direct descendants to track down. However, he had several brothers and one sister, so there might be some trackable great nieces and nephews, who might know something. There are also about a dozen extant Humphrey catalogues dating form circa 1922 to the very late 1940s.
Do the early Humphrey bikes resemble anything from the U.S.? If yes, that could be a sign that they were a rebadging operation. If they had hubs and cranksets that are visible in other Canadian catalogues of the time then maybe they were assembling bikes with locally sourced parts. Maybe Max can tell us something about his '20s Humphrey. I've been to both the Humphrey and Planet former factory buildings and they are very similar in size (small). The Planet bldg is now a drug store. If Planet was welding frames together and buying wholesale lugs, hubs, etc. for assembly, then I suspect Humphrey was a similar operation.
My Humphrey looks CCM, to be honest ..... nothing screams US
except for color (blue is a lot darker), badge, crank and sprocket
if i use the CCM dating chart, it would be 1929,
rear hub is a pre-1930 tricoaster SA with quadrant shifter
it's a single bar, fork looks like the 3 layer Massey fork, has trust rods, motorbike stem and handlebars
gibson pat app for pedals
front hub is the large size CCM hub
fenders are CCM style, rear rack is CCM style, wood rims are CCM style clincher (clear wood with blue center stripe and red side stripes)
dark blue color with gold pins all over
beautiful original condition down to original leather grips
only thing I did was add modern Vittoria black tires to make it rideable
Thanks Max. Would you be able to post a photo of the head badge?
I've seen about a dozen Humphrey. They all appeared to be CCM contract manufacture based on serial number, frame characteristics and components.
That would certainly be the case in the postwar period, and from what Max says, in the '20s too. Maybe all Humphrey ever did was order batches of completed frames and a few other parts from CCM, buy other parts from English and American suppliers, and complete the painting and assembly at their Bulwer St. location. If this is the case, it means CCM welcomed the sales of completed frames and didn't consider Humphrey to be serious competition. When CCM bought them out, they must have been after the nameplate more than anything else (for their low priced models as we know).
Brian, I suspect that brand acquisition was a minor factor compared to acquisition of the workforce. In all probability, the workers at Humphrey were non-unionzed and paid far less than CCM workers. CCM probably had slim profit margins on their budget brands due to labour costs. Buying Humphrey and operating it as a subsidiary, would have allowed CCM to offload their budget brands, so that they could be assembled by cheaper labour, resulting in higher profits.
Yeah, there is a guy out here (BC) with a K ''royal'' . It was a camel back. I researched it, there was a picture I found of the store front. I have pictures of the ''K'' royal somewhere.The bike looked just like a CCM.