Electricity was distributed in rural areas only after the urban market was assured. In 1912 the chairman of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission, Adam Beck, launched a vigorous rural electrification programme. The Hydro Circus was a caravan of horse-drawn wagons that displayed useful electrical machines to potential rural customers. The horse-drawn wagons were eventually replaced by this truck which carried a variety of electrical machines such as a churn, a waterpump, a milking machine and a washing machine. The exhibit was dubbed "Beck's Circus" and helped to fulfill the chairman's promise "to bring the life-giving elixir of cheap power to every Ontario hamlet and homestead."
