Homemade hair tonic helped build Ontario historic district
Robert J. Kideney came to Ontario as a tourist and liked the place so much he soon became a major developer of properties in the city. And he brought with him the bestgroomed hair you could find.
He was one of the inventors of Wildroot Hair Tonic in Buffalo, New York, one of the first nationally marketed and advertised hair care products. This brought Kideney the wealth that enabled him to come west and develop land in Ontario, shadowing what fellow Canadian George Chaffey did 30 years before.
Kideney was responsible for developing what today is known as the La Deney Drive Historic District, an avenue of historic houses built in north Ontario. In January 1928, he advertised in the Ontario Daily Report the sale of lots — $1,500 and up on “easy terms in the best residential section of Ontario,” just off Euclid Avenue.
What followed was the building of mostly Mediterranean-style houses by some of the city’s more prominent residents. “La Deney” was taken from part of Kideney’s last name and the first two letters of Laidlaw, his wife Sylvia’s maiden name, according to city historic district documents.
But 20 years earlier, becoming a California land developer was certainly not on the mind of Kideney as he worked in the barber shop in Buffalo’s Iroquois Hotel. He and fellow barber Morrell C. Howell in 1907 decided to work in their spare time creating their own formula for hair tonic — then a fashion “musthave” for any properly groomed male.
In Kideney’s basement, the two men tried out their formulas in five-gallon stoneware crocks. The finished product proved an immediate success with customers. Encouraged by that response, the pair began marketing their tonic to barber shops all over the Buffalo area.
By 1911, their basement crocks were long forgotten as demand for their product grew so quickly that the first small factory they opened was soon replaced by a bigger plant. By 1920, the Wildroot company was doing a million dollars in business a year and its products were available in 75,000 barber shops and drug stores across the country, reported the Buffalo Commercial News of Dec. 19, 1921.
A nationwide advertising program promoted Wildroot products which among other things claimed to prevent balding and dandruff. The line was also expanded to include shampoos for women.
With his new wealth, Kideney brought his family west to Ontario for the first time in 1923. Though remaining a vice-president for Wildroot, he soon made the city his home, buying a large orange grove on Sixth Street as well as 20 lots, which became his La Deney development. He also purchased business lots along Euclid Avenue and A Street (today’s Holt Avenue.)
Around the corner from the La Deney tract, Kideney and his wife built a large home at
Sixth Street and Columbia Avenue.
He spared no expense in building a fashionable model home on La Deney, which was soon visited by thousands of people, said the Daily Report of Jan.
17, 1928. He admitted that he put in more money into the model home than it could be reasonably sold for. But Kideney said he would charge it all to advertising and promotion and figured he’d make money that way.
In subsequent years, Kideney left Wildroot and about 1931 briefly started his own cosmetics firm locally under the trade name Ar-Jay.
Kideney died at San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland on Aug. 20, 1933. He is buried in his native Ontario province of Canada.
As for Wildroot, the brand name was sold to Colgate Palmolive in 1959, and a variety of Wildroot products are still produced by the Oakhurst
Co. of Levittown, New York.