Stacey Electric marks century of service

When Harry C. Stacey established Stacey Electric in Toronto in 1907, he could never have imagined the company’s future. Back then, the company operated as a Westinghouse dealer, selling appliances and offering a mix of contracting services, from residential to commercial.

Historic Milestone

Stacey Electric marks century of service

TORONTO

When Harry C. Stacey established Stacey Electric in Toronto in 1907, he could never have imagined the company’s future. Back then, the company operated as a Westinghouse dealer, selling appliances and offering a mix of contracting services, from residential to commercial.

It hasn’t sold an electric range in years, instead now offering high-tech commercial electrical services with a focus on traffic signals and intelligent highway and weather reporting systems.

“Harry went overseas during World War One to join the war effort,” says Leif Hudson, one of the current partners in the business. “He scaled back the company and started it up again when he returned.” Harry’s son Jack joined full time in 1947 after serving in the Second World War.

The next decade saw the contractor installing traffic systems in the Toronto area and being the first company to maintain traffic signals for Metropolitan Toronto Transportation. The company increasingly focused on transportation contracts, including street lighting. When Jack retired in 1961, he sold the company to an employee, an electrician named Frank Hudson, and his brother Bent (Leif’s dad).

In deference to the company’s founder, they retained the name — and one of the company’s original signs, which is still on display in the office.

Stacey continued to grow, picking up traffic signal contracts in Brampton, Mississauga, the Region of Peel and York Region, doubling in size in 1979 with the purchase of Structural Electric.

“With such large public contracts, we’re very visible,” says Hudson. “You see trucks with the Stacey name everywhere, from the Soo as far as Peterborough and Belleville and everywhere between.”

In 1997, the company won the Metro Toronto Transportation Contract and opened a second office in London, Ont. Frank retired in 2003, followed by Bent in 2006.

The company is currently owned by president Gary Bergeron, and partners Leif, Les Gibbs, Peter Melnyk, Louis Melo, Bob Plant, and Francis Tong. “When my father retired, we shifted from a family company to group ownership,” says Hudson. “We’re seven different — sometimes very different — people who each has his own specialty and continue to work well together.”

Stacey continues to embrace new technology, installing Advanced Roadway Weather Information Systems (ARWIS) to provide instant road data, and working on landmark projects, such as the installation of Canada’s first hybrid Spread Spectrum Radio/Leased Line-based Centralized Traffic Control System, which manages signals at 550 intersections, for York Region Transportation Department.

“We’re also keen on new developments in the use of LEDs in roadway lighting that would constitute a major shift for the industry and an enormous retrofitting project,” says Hudson. “Of course, over the next 100 years we’ll be working up to our second century anniversary — and I’d love to be at that party.”