designs, Clairtone was facing insurmountable financial troubles. In 1963, it earned a profit of $300,000 on sales of $10 million, and profits decreased the following year as marketing costs rose higher than sales. Early investor Frank Sobey, who had been mayor of Stellarton, Nova Scotia from 1937 to 1959 and was then president of Industrial Estates Limited (IEL), helped the company obtain financial support from the Government of Nova Scotia to open an electronics manufacturing plant in Stellarton. The company decided to switch production to televisions at this time and was fully operational in Stellarton by the summer of 1966. There were close to 1,000 employees at the time. Clairtone launched its new G-TV television set with its usual flair, hiring the cinematographer Fritz Spiess to direct a TV advertisement that starred Peter Munk and David Gilmour driving a 1936 Pierce-Arrow convertible across the Brooklyn Bridge—with a Clairtone TV set in the back seat (the ad, titled "New York," can be found on YouTube today). But Clairtone's entry into the colour television market was ill-timed (the market would not take off for another five years; see History of Television). Sales were exceedingly poor, with annual losses in 1967 of more than $6 million, and the business began to spiral out of control. In October, 1967, Industrial Estates Limited, an economic development agency of the Government of Nova Scotia, took over control of the company from Peter Munk and David Gilmour. Sales continued to decline and the share price plunged from more than $15 in 1967 to a few cents by 1970. A confidential study commissioned by Clairtone in 1967 found that the failure of the plant was in part due to the local workforce: "The general population is basically not geared to the manufacturing frenzy and especially the five-day workweek... The welfare situation is such that it has created conditions similar to Appalachia in the United States where the third generation is already on relief." But, as reported by Peter Munk's daughter, the financial journalist Nina Munk, in her 2008 book about Clairtone (The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958-1971), the labour force in Stellarton was only one of many problems: "Nothing went smoothly, from all accounts. Cost controls were 'nonexistent,' according to the commissioned study. Roads leading to the factory were so bad that Clairtone's stereos and TVs were often damaged en route. Getting parts