Considering that they were used in circuits that run at such high voltages, and that it tripped the breaker, I doubt it's burned out. Have you seen a broken filament or checked it for continuity?
Hard to tell what such a reply is supposed to suggest but it didn't surprise me.

The label is fully intact and more than just printed letters, and I know where the company was based so it shouldn't be that hard. Besides, information for many things Canadian is very difficult to find on Google so I'll just have to check other sources.

Just commiserating with you on how some info gets buried or doesn't exist on the otherwise "knows-all, tells-all" internet, and truly wishing you luck on finding it.

I have seen these appear around here over the last decade. Nearby strip mall replaced their sodium with them, there is two or three used at the university before the next annual budget went all-LED and a few of the MoT rest stops have them. Supposedly they operate on the same principle as fluorescent but with no electrodes they are overall better technology as they last longer, use less power and have a much larger striking range.

I remember seeing fluorescent lighting at gas stations when I was growing up, but not so much as street lighting. At least one former gas station (now a body shop) still turns on their fluorescent lights at night. One current gas station lit theirs for a year or so, but didn't bother to turn it off during the day! It's been off ever since; not sure if the tubes/ballast failed, or if they just don't bother anymore.

Up until the early-mid '90s, my town used mercury vapor street lighting. We lived on a small private road, and still had an incandescent streetlight. Around the time the town converted their streetlights to sodium vapor, they took down our streetlight, and didn't replace it for a few years, upon which they replaced it with a sodium vapor one which is still there.

A few years ago, I found an American Electric street light head in a trash pile across the street from my house. It's equipped with a 100W GE mercury vapor bulb, and a ballast coil of some sort. I'm not sure how to wire it up; I tried connecting a 120V cheater cord to its terminals, but no dice. Guessing it needs 240 or 277V, but I have no real idea how I'd accommodate it in that regard. Here are some pictures of it:

http://www.electronixandmore.com/ada...ght/bottom.jpg
http://www.electronixandmore.com/ada...ght/inside.jpg

There's a hotel/Tiki bar in East Vancouver called the Waldorf that refurbished the exterior about a decade ago so it was no longer a super seedy bar and hooker hang-out. Along with restoring the exterior to it's original style they replaced all the original fluorescent lighting along the roofline and it ran happily for years. About two years ago however the building changed owners and it rapidly fell into disrepair. They removed it all for good in the spring as they are slowly pushing the plot through city hall for redevelopment. Not sure though why you would want to pay Vancouver rates though for a condo that overlooks the docks and both a chicken rendering and processing plant.

http://www.ryeberg.com/wp-content/up...1-1023x682.jpg

Edited: I forgot I also did some digging and found photos of my town in the late 60's when the main drags were still fluorescent.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...Bucket/_58.jpg
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...Bucket/_58.jpg

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...1939_small.jpg
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...1939_small.jpg

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...et/293_001.jpg
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...et/293_001.jpg

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...et/954_001.jpg
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...et/954_001.jpg

The same street, but a few years later. Note the sodium heads.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...et/804_001.jpg
http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...et/804_001.jpg

Yeah, we did, I know some areas in Pittsburgh that had it until the 1990's. I remember driving my grandmother at the time and she said that she "remembers those old streetlights from the time when she was a little girl." (she was born in 1912) IIRC, I remember seeing some of them in the older Robinson/Kennedy Township areas, McKees Rocks and West End in the Western side of the Pittsburgh area.

It looked a lot like the pic I posted below.

http://www.vintagestreetlights.com/g...ler/joe007.jpg

Saw this one in Santa Monica, CA a week ago. There’s quite a few of these old fixtures out there still, often hidden in plain view.

Pasadena, CA and some parts of Detroit still have this kind of lighting today. IIRC it’s series-string lighting.

The one from Santa Monica looks more like '80'-'90's.

I also saw a similar streetlamp on a bridge in Steubenville, Ohio although it looks more updated.

This thread is quite old now but I'm bumping it purely to enlighten Telecolor. ;)
Here is a 1963 catalog from General Electric listing the specifications on their then modern street lighting, including fluorescent.

https://www.scribd.com/document/3316...g-Catalog-1963

Scribd link, sorry. You should be able to see the entire thing at least once before it nags you to register.

Note that the most powerful lamp they list is the Form 606. It's an 8 foot long 100lb+ monster that takes SIX 230w Very High Output tubes and ran so hot it came standard with active cooling. Power consumption is somewhere around 1200W and provides roughly 65000 lumens of light output.

http://www.galleryoflights.org/mb/ga...treetlight.JPG
http://www.galleryoflights.org/mb/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-10671

General Electric was a very normal supplier in North America, so a lot of the products in that catalog will be recognized by a few people here

Well, that explains how those fluorescents on State Street could work in Chicago winters.

lol! Damn 1200w fluorescent light, that's insane! Look at those tubes though, very interesting.

The dimples put more phosphor closer to the UV arc source, but make it more difficult to prevent degradation of the phosphor with time. Similar problems were experienced in the design of plasma flat TV panels.

They stopped making those tubes recently. I know a local TV collector that has a hoard of those tubes and that was the explanation I was given.