SOME BOLER HISTORY
In 1973 I became the Production Manager for Neonex Housing Industries
in
Calgary. I had been transferred from the Neonex Leisure
Products plant
in Red Deer where we manufactured Travelaire, Holidaire, Rustler and
Otto brand rec vehicles.
Neonex Housing manufactured mobile homes and was a division of Neonex
International - one of Jimmy Pattison's companies. There were
several
divisions in Neonex Leisure Products of which three were in the Canadian
RV industry - Travelaire etc., Triple-E, and Boler. Triple-E
was and
still is, I believe, headquartered in Winkler, Manitoba. In 1973
Boler
was located in a factory in Winnipeg where it had been founded.
(Your
web site shows Earlton manufacturing in Ontario. I'm not sure
how they
fit into the history of Boler.)
Somewhere around 1974 or 1975 Jimmy asked the management group at Neonex
Housing to examine the Boler operation and to build a business plan
to
move the Boler factory to Calgary. A building was constructed
north of
the Neonex Housing plant on the Trans-Canada Highway. Our president
Dan
Johnsen was instrumental in getting the Boler factory into operation
and
the service manager for Neonex Housing, Peter Kennedy, eventually became
the General Manager of the Boler operation. I believe that these latter
two individuals still live in Calgary.
Initially, the new Calgary plant assembled only the original "small"
Boler trailer. A couple of years after starting operations in
Calgary a
development program was initiated to build a larger Boler with basically
the same exterior profile. The larger unit was brought to market
well
before 1979 but was not produced in large numbers. I believe
one of
the biggest production problems was finding or training skilled
fiberglass technicians.
I left the Neonex organization in 1979. My knowledge of what happened
to Boler after that is weak. I believe that Jimmy shortly thereafter
moved Boler to the Okanagan to marry it with the Vanguard factory,
which
he had bought in the late 70's or early 80's. One of the
potential
benefits of moving to the Okanagan was the greater availability of
skilled fiberglass technicians.
My brother was an employee of Boler in Calgary. I will ask him
if he
would like to send you some of his recollections of Boler's Calgary
operation.
Best regards,
Michael Jessen