Insulbrick Once Ubiquitous, Now Forgotten

Growing up in a railway town as I did in the 1950s and '60s, many of the Canadian Pacific Railway wooden structures that I saw were sided with a product which gave the appearance of brick. Called Insulbrick, it was made in Canada by a Winnipeg company from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s.

It was so widely used on heated structures across Canada that one might easily assume it had been invented for or by the railway. The buildings it covered, such as section houses and homes for minor managers, are now mostly demolished or sheathed with vinyl.

Insulbrick (it goes by various spellings) was similar to today's asphalt shingles, but intended for vertical surfaces. Its touted benefits were that it looked superficially like real brick, and required no regular maintenance.