Breslau, Ontario hamlet is home of hockey stick

Breslau, Ont.—(???)—This Ontario hamlet is the home of the hockey stick, where only 30 men and women turn out more sticks a day than any factory in the world.

The Breslau wood specialties factory, five miles from Kitchener in Waterloo county, is equipped with ultra-modern machinery geared to produce 3,000 hockey sticks a day—10 grades of them, from the cheapest up to the professional and custom-made.

They retail at prices ranging from 50 cents to $3.

If we had to depend on the professional business we'd starve to death, says J. J. Clark, who established the industry 16 years ago and who is glad that school boys and beginners use a lot of sticks.

All during the depression years I bought sticks from Spaldings, and finally decided to get into the business of making them myself, he said.

He started in a small way in a building across the road from the factory he now owns and which was erected two years ago with 12,000 feet of floor space.

Second only to the fact that the factory had grown in a short time to house the world's most prolific hockey stick industry is the fact that Clake design and made most of the machinery himself.

Use local wood

Rough ash squares for the stick handles are brought from Québec and the rest of the wood is gathered from within a 150-mile radius of Breslau.

There is an average of 100,000 feet of lumber in the during kilns at a time.

Wholesale chains handle all sales with some buying 5,600 to 9,000 dozen sticks a year.

One part of the factory machinery Clark is particularly proud of is an electronic device which dries the glue in six sticks in two minutes. The old clamp method took days.

Stations: Breslau

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