Published in the OTTAWA BUSINESS JOURNAL
December 1, 2020
In retrospect, an armed invasion probably wasn’t the best way for Clayton Jones and his fast-growing railway companies to finally get noticed.
Last April, when COVID-19 tensions were running high along the border with northern New York, residents in the St. Lawrence River communities in eastern Ontario were alarmed to see dozens of Canadian military vehicles rolling down the streets. Rumours flew about the army locking down the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge, the establishment of a tent hospital for the infected and nearly every other topic that has made 2020 such a boon for the conspiracy-minded.
Tinfoil-hat fantasies were foiled, though. Instead of martial law, the line of armoured cars, troop transports and more was just the latest and most visible sign of the huge success of Jones’s Canadian Rail Equipment Works & Services (CREWS) and Jones Rail Industries companies.
