Summerside's War Effort During WWII

When war began in 1939 there were various small industries operating in Summerside. They included such firms as Hall Manufacturing Ltd., Bishop's Foundry Ltd., and M. F. Schurman Ltd., which had been in business for decades. All of them had extra work during the war, especially Schurman's that blossomed into a major building company with numerous wartime contracts. Other local contracting firms that rode the wave of the strong economy were R. T. Morrison & Sons, Curran & Briggs, and the Trask Well Company.

Other large business firms already in existence included the PEI Bag Company, Jenkins Cannery, MacFarlane Produce Company, Joseph Read Company, Morrison Bros. Beverage, Perfection Dairy, and International Fox and Animal Foods Ltd.

Several new industries came into being during the early 1940s. The Island Foods Company Ltd. built and operated a potato dehydration plant and Palmer & Williams Ltd.

built harbour patrol boats to fill wartime contracts. Jenkins Brothers built at large modern canning plant in 1943 in response to the wartime need for canned chicken. Near the end of 1945, the Summerside Fertilizer Company began operations to supply farmers who had increased their crop production during the war. The eastern end of town became an early industrial park for Summerside.

An interesting and relatively unknown industry to produce pit props was in evidence on a section of land at the corner of Linkletter Road and what is now South Drive. During the early part of the war, Island farmers were encouraged to thin their woodlots by producing softwood poles that could be shipped to Britain for use in mines. Mac MacLean bought the posts from farmers in Prince County and then sold them to a company in Moncton who looked after their distribution.

Three of the businesses mentioned above have separate pages: Palmer & Williams Boatbuilding, the Dehydration Plant, and Jenkins Bros Cannery.