City Departments
Hall of Fame Members
Hugh McCulloch
Inducted 2001
Hugh McCulloch was born in Sorn, Ayrshire, Scotland on 19 Sep 1826 and arrived in Canada on 24 Aug 1850. He settled first in Ayr before coming to Galt on 28 May 1851.
In 1859, with his partner John Goldie, Mr McCulloch purchased the Dumfries Foundry from James Crombie and formed the firm of Goldie & McCulloch Co. Ltd. During its first years of operation, the company performed general foundry work but, as business increased, the firm went into the manufacture of boilers, engines, flour and sawmill machinery and woodworking machinery. In 1879 the company added the manufacture of safes and vaults to its operations. Mr McCulloch was named company president in 1901 and retired from active work in the business in 1906. However, he remained company president until his death in 1910. In 1923, the Babcock and Wilcox companies of Great Britain and the United States became majority shareholders in the local foundry, which then became Babcock-Wilcox & Goldie-McCulloch Co. Ltd and was more recently renamed Babcock & Wilcox.
Mr McCulloch was a member of the Galt Collegiate Institute Board for twenty-five years and was a member of Galt municipal council in 1873 and 1874, 1876 and 1877, 1879 to 1881 and 1888. He was an original member of the Galt, Preston and Hespeler Street Railway, later Grand River Railway, and became the railway's president for a short time on the death of Thomas Todd in 1899. Mr McCulloch was a director of the Gore Mutual Fire Insurance Co. from 1868 to 1874 and served as the company's vice president from 1902 to 1910. He was a director of the Millers and Manufacturers Insurance Company and was a partner, with David Spiers, in the operation of the Galt Gas Works and later in the Galt Electric Light Company. Mr McCulloch died on 3 Sep 1910 and is buried in Mount View Cemetery.