Report - Loss Due to Ice Rankine Station - 1938 through 1941

A report outlining the expenses of loss due to ice from the year 1938 through 1941 at the Rankine Station. Included in the report is the lost income due to power outages, operating labour, operating material and the sum of these costs per annum.

New Rate Schedules - 1927

A notification from the Canadian Niagara Power Co. detailing a rate increase for domestic customers. Two schedules are listed, one for customers under 1,000 watts and the other for customers over 1,000 watts.

Letter - J. M. Bromley to A. M. Grier, 1 November 1906

A letter from J. M. Bromley regarding the commission of the seal for the Canadian Niagara Power Company.

Niagara Ship Canal [to accompany Bill H.R. no. 921], February 14, 1837 (1837)

Mr. Hard, from the Committee on Roads and Canals, made the following report.

Niagara Ship Canal : letter from the Secretary of War, transmitting report by Colonel Blunt, on the surveys for a ship canal to connect Lakes Erie and Ontario (1868)

March 3, 1868. -- Referred to the Select Committee on the Niagara Ship Canal.

Niagara Ship Canal [to accompany Bill H.R. no.432] (1858)

At head of Caption title: 35th Congress, 1st session. House of Representatives, Report no. 374.

Report on the Expenditure of the Welland and Burlington Canals, 1830

This copy is signed in the upper left hand corner by Mr. Dickson. Mr. Robert Dickson was one of the directors of the Welland Canal Office. The report covers meetings which were held: January 15-16, and 19 of 1830. The meetings were attended by Messrs. Blacklock, Mackenzie, Woodruff, Longley and Hopkins. Balance sheets are also included within the report. The report of the Welland Canal Company for 1829 is also included within this document, and this is dated December 31, 1829. Names at the end of the 1929 report are members of the Welland Canal Office and they include: John Henry Dunn, president; Henry J. Boulton, vice-president and William Allan, George Keefer, John J. Lefferty and Robert Dickson who were directors The report is dated January 26, 1830, and submitted by Thomas Horner, chairman of the Commons House of Assembly.

Photographs of secretarial staff at Lightning Fastener, ca. 1935

Lightning Fastener Co. Ltd. was a zipper manufacturer located on Niagara Street in St. Catharines. It was founded by Gideon Sundback, the inventor of the modern fastener. Sundback was born in Sweden, but settled in the United States in 1905. It was here that he designed and patented a “separable fastener” in 1913. Although he lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, he decided to establish a manufacturing facility for his invention in Canada, choosing St. Catharines over other locations such as Fort Erie and Hamilton. At the height of its success, the company employed more than 500 people and produced more than 50 million zippers annually. Over time, the company had difficulty remaining competitive and was forced to close in 1981.

Receipt, The Robert Simpson Company 1935

A receipt from The Robert Simpson Company limited for four comforters. The receipt is Mrs. A. Schmon's of 30 Yates Street in St. Catharines.

The "Bodega" Company Price List

A price list for The "Bodega" Company Limited. The company has branches throughout the United Kingdom, including: London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Brighton, and Ryde. The final pages of the price list also include a reprinted article from "The Irish Times" concerning a case against the use of the Bodega Company name.

Association of Major Power Consumers in Ontario records, 1975-1989

The Association of Major Power Consumers in Ontario (AMPCO) was founded as the Niagara Basic Power Users' Association in the early 1960s. It was a coalition of seven companies in the chemical, pulp and paper, and abrasives industries within the Niagara region. The Association was formed to address increasing electricity rates. In 1974, the name changed to the Association of Direct Customers of Ontario. This change reflected the expansion of the regional Association to a provincial one, which grew in response to Ontario Hydro’s proposed rate increases of over 30 per cent. In 1975, the Association adopted its current name. AMPCO continues to advocate for “electricity rates that are competitive, fair and efficient, and a reliable supply of electrical energy across Ontario.”

Letter to the Estate of W.D. Woodruff from S. Mitchell, secretary of the Lincoln Paper Mills Company

Letter to the Estate of W.D. Woodruff from S. Mitchell, secretary of the Lincoln Paper Mills Company (1 page, printed). This is a notice of the 43rd annual meeting of the shareholders of the Lincoln Paper Mills Company, Limited. This is accompanied by an envelope, Feb. 7, 1921.

Letter to Mrs. A.L. Woodruff from S. Mitchell, secretary of the Lincoln Paper Mills Company

Letter to Mrs. A.L. Woodruff from S. Mitchell, secretary of the Lincoln Paper Mills Company (1 page, printed). This is a notice of the 43rd annual meeting of the shareholders of the Lincoln Paper Mills Company, Limited. This is accompanied by an envelope, Feb. 7, 1921.

Letter to Dr. T.A. Woodruff from S. Mitchell, secretary of the Lincoln Paper Mills Company

Letter to Dr. T.A. Woodruff from S. Mitchell, secretary of the Lincoln Paper Mills Company (1 page, printed). This is a notice of the 43rd annual meeting of the shareholders of the Lincoln Paper Mills Company, Limited. This is accompanied by an envelope, Feb. 7, 1921.

Gli assetti proprietari e di controllo nell'agroalimentare italiano

The recent default of important Italian agri-business companies provides a challenging issue to be investigated through an appropriate scientific approach. The events involving CIRIO, FERRUZZI or PARMALAT rise an important research question: what are the determinants of performance for Italian companies in the Italian agri – food sector? My aim is not to investigate all the factors that are relevant in explaining performance. Performance depends on a wide set of political, social, economic variables that are strongly interconnected and that are often very difficult to express by formal or mathematical tools. Rather, in my thesis I mainly focus on those aspects that are strictly related to the governance and ownership structure of agri – food companies representing a strand of research that has been quite neglected by previous scholars. The conceptual framework from which I move to justify the existence of a relationship between the ownership structure of a company, governance and performance is the model set up by Airoldi and Zattoni (2005). In particular the authors investigate the existence of complex relationships arising within the company and between the company and the environment that can bring different strategies and performances. They do not try to find the “best” ownership structure, rather they outline what variables are connected and how they could vary endogenously within the whole economic system. In spite of the fact that the Airoldi and Zattoni’s model highlights the existence of a relationship between ownership and structure that is crucial for the set up of the thesis the authors fail to apply quantitative analyses in order to verify the magnitude, sign and the causal direction of the impact. In order to fill this gap we start from the literature trying to investigate the determinants of performance. Even in this strand of research studies analysing the relationship between different forms of ownership and performance are still lacking. In this thesis, after a brief description of the Italian agri – food sector and after an introduction including a short explanation of the definitions of performance and ownership structure, I implement a model in which the performance level (interpreted here as Return on Investments and Return on Sales) is related to variables that have been previously identified by the literature as important such as the financial variables (cash and leverage indices), the firm location (North Italy, Centre Italy, South Italy), the power concentration (lower than 25%, between 25% and 50% and between 50% and 100% of ownership control) and the specific agri – food sector (agriculture, food and beverage). Moreover we add a categorical variable representing different forms of ownership structure (public limited company, limited liability company, cooperative) that is the core of our study. All those variables are fully analysed by a preliminary descriptive analysis. As in many previous contributions we apply a panel least squares analysis for 199 Italian firms in the period 1998 – 2007 with data taken from the Bureau Van Dijck Dataset. We apply two different models in which the dependant variables are respectively the Return on Investments (ROI) and the Return on Sales (ROS) indicators. Not surprisingly we find that companies located in the North Italy representing the richest area in Italy perform better than the ones located in the Centre and South of Italy. In contrast with the Modigliani - Miller theorem financial variables could be significant and the specific sector within the agri – food market could play a relevant role. As the power concentration, we find that a strong property control (higher than 50%) or a fragmented concentration (lower than 25%) perform better. This result apparently could suggest that “hybrid” forms of concentrations could create bad functioning in the decision process. As our key variables representing the ownership structure we find that public limited companies and limited liability companies perform better than cooperatives. This is easily explainable by the fact that law establishes that cooperatives are less profit – oriented. Beyond cooperatives public limited companies perform better than limited liability companies and show a more stable path over time. Results are quite consistent when we consider both ROI and ROS as dependant variables. These results should not lead us to claim that public limited company is the “best” among all possible governance structures. First, every governance solution should be considered according to specific situations. Second more robustness analyses are needed to confirm our results. At this stage we deem these findings, the model set up and our approach represent original contributions that could stimulate fruitful future studies aimed at investigating the intriguing issue concerning the effect of ownership structure on the performance levels.