Ontario Lantern Co.

The Ontario Lantern Company was formed in 1891, in Hamilton, Ontario when two men, Water Grose of Montreal, Quebec and Ernest Schultz of Hamilton took over the Burn Lantern Company from Walter S. Burn. Ernest Schultz, an accomplished lantern designer, was the superintendent and manager of the Burn Lantern Co.

This new Ontario Lantern Co. would go on to be a wildly successful company, rising to be the second largest lantern producer in Canada. Their main lantern line was the “Climax” making many different variations of the Climax.

In 1896 with their business steadily growing Ontario Lantern entered into a partnership with the large American company Plume and Atwood Mfg. Co. to manufacture their “Climax” and “Banner” lamp burners in Canada. Around the same time, Walter Grose bought out the struggling Dominion Tubular Lamp Co. of Montreal. Walter Grose being from Montreal took over the building used by Dominion Tubular to use as the production plant for the P&A burners and the lines of lamps already being made by the now gone Dominion Tubular Lamp Co. This would be the start of Ontario Lantern Co’s lamp business.

 1904 Changes

Walter Grose was overseeing this new lamp side of the business in Montreal while Ernest Schultz continued to oversee the Lantern side of the business in Hamilton, Ontario. This proved incredibly successful, however, Walter Grose wanted to move the business more into the lamp market, while Ernest was rather content to stay focused on lanterns. As a result of this conflict in 1904 Walter Grose “compelled”, as it was written about at the time, Ernest Schultz to sell his shares of the company to Walter.  After this the name of the company was changed to the Ontario Lantern & Lamp Co. in 1904. Ernest Schultz would go on to form a new company The Schultz Manufacturing Co. in Hamilton. A company that remained in business as far as I can tell into the 1960s.