Electroplating Toronto’s Golden Mile

Eighty years ago this part of Toronto was farmland. When World War II came along, the Canadian government turned it into a military production zone, where factory workers made bombs and artillery shells.

Most of the workers were women, because most of the men were gone. Books have been written about them. They stuck this zone out in the middle of nowhere so Toronto wouldn’t explode if there was an accidental detonation. There wasn’t, even with 20,000 workers filling 256 million munitions.

After the war was won, the compound shifted to commercial manufacturing. It was one of Canada’s first industrial parks and it was booming. In 1959 the Queen of England was at the grand opening of a grocery store up the street — think about that. We were doing the same thing then as we are doing now.

This part of town became known as Toronto’s Golden Mile, and that’s when Scarborough grew up. The neighbourhood has changed, but some of us original tenants still hold our ground. The ghost of an old railway line that used to lead to the dearly departed GMC plant runs right through our parking lot.

Electroplating since 1958, H&E Plating is the longest-serving plating company in Toronto. Our experience as metal platers affords us the capacity, process diversity, expertise and work ethic to quickly turn around all tin plating, cadmium plating, zinc plating, stainless steel passivating and aluminum chemical conversion work orders. Legend has it, components of the Avro Arrow flew through this building.

These days, metal from our shop heads across the street to build a new cell phone tower, or next door to hold together an information terminal. It travels to hydro fields outside of the city. It ships out-of-province to support mining operations. Sometimes it just leaves our shop in an old bucket and ends up in your neighbour’s garage so they can restore that car they’re always talking about.

Why do we do this? Because we are as stubborn, resilient and enduring as our metal plating processes. The metal that leaves our shop is yours. It’s your project, your contract, your job, your equipment, your supply chain, your business. We just help finish what you started. Whether you are rebuilding an important part of the past, maintaining a valuable piece of modern-day equipment, or installing infrastructure that needs to be reliable for the next 35 years; we want to protect it. We want to be a part of it.