O-7744

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chair (Speaker's)

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1909-1911 The Honourable Charles Marcil

Valley City Seating Company

The Valley City Seating Company has its roots in a Hamilton, Ontario, venture launched in 1884 by John D. Pennington and Edgar Baker. Initially, the business supplied wooden casings for telephones (still a recent invention at the time) and manufactured student desks for the rapidly growing school system in Canada and the United States. In 1890, Pennington and Baker moved their expanding operations to an old foundry building in nearby Dundas, a community that is now part of the greater Hamilton area. Over the next four decades, the company produced furniture of all kinds but was perhaps best known for church pews and custom courthouse seating. Baker left the partnership at some point, and Pennington transferred the Valley City Seating Company to his sons when he retired in 1929. The business suffered major losses during the Great Depression and went bankrupt in 1937.