“The Automotive Industry in 1986 comprised some 500 establishments, producing almost $37 billion in vehicles and parts; it ranked first among Canada’s manufacturing industries. The first horseless carriage in Canada was built by Henry Seth Taylor in 1867 in Stanstead, Québec.
The automotive industry began in Canada when a group of young businessmen in Windsor, Ontario, led by Gordon M. McGregor, formed the Ford Motor Co of Canada, Ltd (1904), only a year after Henry Ford, the promoter and inventor, had begun production in Detroit. Cars were assembled in the works of the Walkerville Wagon Co, Ltd, as parts were ferried by wagonload across the Detroit River. Canadian Fords were soon being shipped to most parts of the far-flung British Empire. Colonel R.S. MCLAUGHLIN, Canada’s pioneer in the industry, converted the family’s thriving carriage and sleigh production in Oshawa, Ontario, to the new horseless carriage with its noisy internal-combustion engine.
The form and size of today’s automotive industry was shaped by the first “Canadian-content” legislation in 1926, the Tariff Board hearings of the mid-1930s, the Royal Commission on the Automotive Industry of 1960, the subsequent CANADA-US AUTOMOTIVE PRODUCTS TRADE AGREEMENT (APTA or Autopact) of 1965, and the Iranian oil crisis of 1979, which ushered in the automotive depression of the early 1980s.”
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0000412
