Ontario Hydro

Ontario Hydro, established in 1906 as the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, was a publicly owned electricity utility in the Province of Ontario. It was formed to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity generated by private companies already operating at Niagara Falls, and soon developed its own generation resources by buying private generation stations and becoming a major designer and builder of new stations. As most of the readily developed hydroelectric sites became exploited, the corporation expanded into building coal-fired generation and then nuclear-powered facilities. Renamed as "Ontario Hydro" in 1974, by the 1990s it had become one of the largest, fully integrated electricity corporations in North America.

The notion of generating electric power on the Niagara River was first entertained in 1888, when the Niagara Parks Commission solicited proposals for the construction of an electric scenic railway from Queenston to Chippawa. The Niagara Falls Park & River Railway was granted the privilege in 1892, and by 1900 it was using a dynamo of 200,000 horsepower (150,000 kW) which was the largest in Canada. Starting in 1899, several private syndicates sought privileges from the commission for generating power for sale, including:

By 1900, a total capacity of 400,000 horsepower (300,000 kW) was in development at Niagara, and concern was expressed as to whether such natural resources were being best exploited for the public welfare. In June 1902, an informal convention was held at Berlin (now Kitchener), which commissioned a report by Daniel B. Detweiler, Elias W.B. Snider and F.S. Spence, who recommended in February 1903 that authority be sought from the Ontario Legislature to allow municipal councils to organize a cooperative to develop, transmit, buy and sell electrical energy. The provincial government of George William Ross refused to allow this, and it was only after its loss in the 1905 election that work began on creating a public utility. During that election campaign, James Pliny Whitney (who would become Premier) declared:

The water power of Niagara should be as free as the air.

In May 1906, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario ("Hydro" or "HEPCO") was formed and its first commissioners were Adam Beck, John S. Hendrie, and Cecil B. Smith, HEPCO was a unique hybrid of a government department, crown corporation and municipal cooperative that coexisted with the existing private companies. It was a "politically rational" rather than a "technically efficient" solution that depended on the watershed election of 1905.

On January 1, 1907, referendums in Toronto and 18 other municipalities approved the provisional contracts that their councils had concluded with HEPC, and subsequent referendums one year later authorized utility bond issues for the construction of local distribution systems. The victories in Toronto were in large part due to the leadership and commitment of Adam Beck's ally, William Peyton Hubbard. The first transmission lines began providing power to southwestern Ontario in 1910. Berlin (Kitchener) would be the first city in Ontario to get hydroelectric power in long-distance transmission lines from Niagara Falls, on October 11, 1910.

The commission's process of expansion was from municipality to municipality, generally in the following manner:

During the 1920s, Hydro's network expanded significantly: