One of Moose Jaw’s oldest manufacturing plants was once part of a chain of millwork operations.
R. L. Cushing Millwork opened shop in Moose Jaw in 1918, one of eight facilities once operated by the Cushing family. The first plant started in Calgary in 1885, the first year of the Riel Rebellion.
Plants were opened in Regina, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Red Deer, Strathcona, Vegreville and Morinville.
The firm was founded by W.H. Cushing, who moved to Calgary from Edmonton in 1883 to supervise the building of the railway roadbed that linked Canada from sea to sea.
When he moved to Calgary, there was a Hudson Bay trading post, a Northwest Company trading post and one lone house.
The move opened up opportunities for the entrepreneurial Cushing. He began a construction business and lumber company.
Some of his first contracts were two churches, a Methodist church and a Presbyterian church on the east end of Calgary.
Cushing built the Calgary water works, pumping station and the first Hudson Bay Company store.
He began making sash and doors in 1887 to overcome slow delivery from suppliers in Eastern Canada.
Cushing Millwork has been called the first manufacturing plant in what became Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The plant expanded several times. In newspaper interviews over the years, the family said success was from a focus on quality work and on investing in the newest woodworking machinery and tools.
The family prided itself on never needing outside financial help to run the business. The business made it through the 1930s Great Depression, although it did close for a while in 1930.
One of Cushing’s brothers opened a sawmill to supply the business, and another brother opened up a second millwork plant in Calgary.
Cushing took an active part in the community, becoming mayor of Calgary for the one-year term in 1900-01 and later alderman. He was on the hospital board for 12 years and was chair of Mount Royal College board of governors for 16 years.
He was also a supporter of the Temperance movement.
When Alberta became a province, he fought hard to have Calgary declared the capital city and to have the University of Alberta located in Calgary.
In 1905 when Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces, he ran for the Alberta Legislature and was elected MLA in the first provincial government.
In an acrimonious and name-calling campaign, he defeated Conservative R.B. Bennett, who in 1930 became prime minister of Canada.
Named public works minister Cushing was responsible for many of the province’s first public buildings like the legislature and courthouses. He resigned from cabinet over a dispute with the premier who granted the A&GW railway (now the CNR) funds without first checking cost estimates.
Calgary’s W. H Cushing Bridge is named for him, and the Louise Bridge was named for his daughter. The Cushing Work Place School was named in his honour.
The Moose Jaw plant, started 105 years ago by his nephew, was destroyed by fire in 1926 and rebuilt.
The local business was sold to employees in 1971. Donald Cushing said the Moose Jaw business was sold due to new and onerous labour regulations by the Saskatchewan government.
Three years later, the plant was again damaged by the flood of 1974.
Tragically three family members died within five years of each other. The remaining three family members, including Debbie Cowan of Moose Jaw, sold the Calgary business.
Ron Walter can be reached at [email protected]
