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One of their early notable achievements was to persuade Thomas Alva Edison to scale down his heavy nickel-iron alkaline battery to a size small enough to be worn on a miner's belt. As a result, open-flame lamps soon disappeared in favour of electric cap lamps, a giant advance towards eliminating fiery mine explosions and saving lives.

In January 1937, Mine Safety Appliances Company of Canada Limited was founded in Montreal, where it remained until 1942, when the head office was relocated to Toronto. It was the first international subsidiary of what was by then the largest company in the world devoted exclusively to the manufacture and distribution of mining and industrial safety products. The name was officially shortened to MSA Canada Inc. in the 1980s.

Its goal was to bring the now established Edison Electric Cap Lamp into widespread use in Canadian underground mines and to introduce Canada's resource and heavy industries to the company's extensive range of respiratory protection devices, gas detection instruments and a myriad of other safety products which had been developed expressly to protect the lives and health of the workers in the primitive and relatively unregulated workplaces typical during those times.

The early years of MSA Canada's existence were dominated by the Second World War and the need to support the Canadian war effort. The extra effort to reach maximum production at this time made worker safety a more important issue than ever. Consequently, MSA Canada began sponsoring a mine safety trophy in 1941. Named the John T. Ryan Trophy in honor of the co-founder of Mine Safety Appliances Company, the trophies have since become the most prestigious safety awards in the Canadian mining industry. They are still sponsored by MSA Canada and are now presented nationally and regionally in three mining categories: metal, coal, and select other mines such as potash, salt, gypsum, etc.

After the War the company diversified to include products for industries in addition to mining, and the focus of MSA Canada broadened to cover all segments of Canadian industry where workers might be exposed to physical danger or health hazards.

Now, more than half a century after its founding, MSA Canada Inc. brings its proven safety technology not just to the mining industry, but to steelmaking, firefighting, defense, oil refining, utility operations, construction, and so on. As part of the world's largest organization dedicated exclusively to the manufacture and distribution of safety products, it remains committed to the values of its co-founders "That Men (and Women) Might Work in Safety."