Canadian Johns-Manville plant at Toronto, Ontario

Canadian Johns-Manville ran a plant at Toronto, Ontario: in November 1959, a company item in Asbestos, the industry's trade journal, said that "Canadian Johns-Manville's Toronto plant, opened in 1948, now manufactures Transite pipe and asbestos-cement sheet products formerly imported into Canada, as well as mineral wool insulations and insulating and refractory cements."¹

The same 1959 item announced, through A. G. Sinclair, vice president and general manager of the company's Canadian Products Division, that the Toronto plant "will be expanded to manufacture" Thermobestos, "a new molded high temperature industrial insulation."¹ The company described it as "composed of asbestos, diatomaceous silica and lime," and said that "commercial production of Thermobestos is expected to start mid year of 1960"; that was a plan, and none of these sources reports that production began.¹ Manville's own description of Thermobestos, reported to the EPA and published in 1990, gives "asbestos fibers, 5 to 10%"; that figure describes the product in general, not Toronto's output.⁴

The pipe works grew: in March 1969, J-M's employee magazine, the J-M News Pictorial, reported that "additional pipe capacity was also completed at the Toronto Canadian Products Plant in Ontario, Canada, to meet that country's market requirements."²

In June 1975, J. R. D. Wilson of the Toronto plant wrote of "the Flexboard building (where asbestos fibre is stored)" there, naming the building after J-M's asbestos-cement sheet, Flexboard.³ Manville's 1990 description of Flexboard gives "asbestos fiber, 40 to 70%," again a figure for the product in general.⁴

Location

Asbestos products made here

The products documents say were made at this plant, with the years a document gives for the product here. Each product's page has what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Flexboard (Johns-Manville) · from 1975³
• Thermobestos¹

Asbestos claims

If you or a family member worked at this plant, lived with someone who did, or worked with its products, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, a claim may be paid by the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust. Free case review.

What each document says

Every statement about this plant in the documents, in each document's own words.

Other names

Documents call this plant “Toronto plant”, “Toronto, Ontario”, “Toronto”.

See also

• Canadian Johns-Manville: the company's documents, people, products and plants

References

1. Asbestos Magazine, 1959, November 1959 (November 1, 1959), p. 12.
2. J-M News Pictorial, 1969, March 1969 (the scan ends with pages repeated from April 1969) (March 1, 1969), p. 4.
3. J. R. D. Wilson's Notice to Toronto Plant Employees on Smoking and Asbestos (June 1, 1975), p. 1.
4. Asbestos; Publication of Identifying Information (February 13, 1990), pp. 14–15.
5. Summary of the Meeting on Asbestos Usage in Canada (March 3, 1975), p. 1.
6. B. C. Machin to the Ontario Ministry of Labour Opposing a Lower Limit for Crocidolite (June 2, 1975), p. 3.