As a kid, I well remember trips with my dad to Jimmy Clement’s Supertest on the northwest corner of William Street and Simcoe Street in Oshawa, Ontario for gas and auto repairs in the early 1960s. I may still have a Supertest roadmap. Jimmy’s dad had operated the Supertest since around 1935.
Supertest, which operated from 1923 to 1973, billed itself as “Canada’s All-Canadian Company,” and was acquired by British Petroleum Canada (BP) in 1971, at which time the slogan was dropped.
Officially knows as Supertest Petroleum Limited, the Canadian petroleum company had its head office in London, Ontario.
John Thompson and James Good formed London Automotive Service Ltd. on March 13, 1923. They purchased the assets of the Energy Oil Company for $10,000. Energy Oil Company owned a gas station on Dundas Street East in London, a bulk storage plant in London, and two fuel delivery tank trucks. Thompson became president and Good was named vice-president and secretary/treasurer. They adopted “Supertest” as the trademark name of their gasoline.
In 1926, Supertest bought the Ensign Oil Company of Montreal, opened a bulk distributing plant at Port Robinson, Ont. and amalgamated all of the subsidiaries companies into one major company known as Supertest Petroleum Corporation Limited. Supertest registered the trademark “Hi Compression” for its new gasoline.
In 1928, a tank ship, the M.S. Supertest, was put into operation. It made deliveries to Kingston, Ottawa and Montreal until it was sold shortly after the Second World World War.
In 1932, Supertest registered the trademark “Wonder Gasoline.”
By 1936, Supertest owned and operated 342 stations with over 800 dealers in Ontario and Quebec and held more than 5,000 consumer accounts. The company had over 100 trucks and 60 automobiles, and employed over 500 people.
In 1944, the company sponsored the first “Supertest Stake Races” harness horse racing. And in 1945, it began publishing The Maple Leaf, a company magazine.
In 1971, Supertest was sold to British Petroleum Canada (BP). The familiar Supertest maple leaf logo was modified to incorporate the BP shield and to drop the “All-Canadian” slogan. By the end of 1973, the Supertest logo and name had been phased out by BP Canada. In 1983, BP Canada was purchased by Petro-Canada, which was then owned by the Government of Canada. Petro-Canada continued to use the Supertest name in their line of transmission oil lubricants through the year 2000.
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