The Imperial Tobacco Company of Canada is a Canadian cigarette manufacturing company that is an indirect subsidiary of British American Tobacco. Once known for marketing Sweet Caporals in Canada, Imperial Tobacco is now known for its du Maurier and Peter Jackson brands of cigarettes.
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History
Imperial Tobacco Company of Canada was created in 1908 out of the merger of the Canadian interests of the American Tobacco Company with local Canadian tobacco companies.
American Tobacco, which had acquired the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, makers of the then-popular cigarette brand Sweet Caporal (which commanded a 50% share of the Canadian cigarette market at the time Imperial Tobacco acquired American Tobacco), had entered the Canadian market by acquiring the Montréal-based American Cigarette Company and D. Ritchie and Company, forming the American Tobacco Company of Canada, Ltd. Imperial Tobacco Company of Canada Ltd. was created out of the cigarette companies founded by Bartholome Houde and George E. Tuckett.
B. Houde & Co.
The company now known as B. Houde & Grothe was founded in 1841 in Quebec City by Bartholome Houde, who passed on his tobacco company to his son-in-law, Francois Xavier Dussault in 1882, after he retired. Francois's sons, J. A. Dussault and J. E. Dussault, turned the concern into the limited company B. Houde & Co. Ltee. in 1903.
In 1908, B. Houde was absorbed by American Tobacco Ltd., the Canadian arm of the United States cigarette monopoly the American Tobacco Co., at the time that American Tobacco merged with Empire Tobacco Co. Ltd. in 1908 to form the Imperial Tobacco Company of Canada. Imperial Tobacco still operates under its 1912 Dominion charter.
George E. Tuckett
George E. Tuckett began making cigars and plug tobacco in Hamilton, Ontario in the years before Confederation. Elected to the Hamilton City Council in 1864, at the age of 29, he later became Hamilton's 32nd Mayor. After his son George T. Tuckett entered the family cigar-making business in 1880, it began to expand, and it began manufacturing cigarettes in 1896. Starting from the original small shop George the elder had opened in Hamilton, the Tuckett Tobacco Company grew into a major manufacturer of cigarettes, cigars, and pipe tobaccos. The company was acquired by Imperial Tobacco in 1930.
Lawsuit
Imperial Tobacco was the first Canadian cigarette manufacturer to be successfully sued by a Canadian governmental entity. The province of British Columbia's lawsuit against Imperial was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in the landmark case British Columbia v. Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., [2005] 2 S.C.R. 473, 2005 SCC 49. The Supreme Court riled that the provincial Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, which allowed the government to sue tobacco companies, was constitutionally valid.