It was on October 2, 2003, a Thursday afternoon, when 137 employees of Nike Bauer’s hockey stick factory in the Hespeler section of Cambridge, Ontario, learned they were losing their jobs.

Nike Bauer president and chief executive officer Chris Zimmerman personally visited the factory to announce the company was planning to shut it down early the following year, ending more than 80 years of hockey stick production at the historic plant on Sheffield Street.

“In the stick business we’ve fallen behind,” he said to a reporter from the Kitchener-Waterloo Record newspaper. “Cambridge is a wood stick factory, and one of the challenges we face is a significant shift in terms of consumer preference.” (1)

Zimmerman, who is now the president and CEO of business operations with the NHL’s St. Louis Blues, recently recalled his role in the closing of the factory.

“The day I went to Hespeler was one of the hardest days I’ve ever had professionally,” he said in an interview. “There were third-generation staff members who had worked there. It was a place where the staff was really proud of its heritage, and the outcome was no fault of their own. Going there myself, communicating that in as compassionate a way as I could, that was my objective.

“No matter what, it’s just a very challenging message because there were tons of pride in the work they did, which I respected, and I respect.”

Zimmerman had only taken the reins of Nike Bauer a few months earlier, so he hadn’t been in charge very long when it became obvious to him that the company was, if not necessarily in trouble, then at least underperforming. Nike had overpaid when it agreed to buy Canstar Sports for nearly $550 million in December 1994, believing that the growing inline skate market was a natural progression for a business that had made its mark with footwear and apparel. Unfortunately, Nike did not foresee the impending collapse of the inline skating fad, and it did not know enough about the manufacturing of hockey equipment to make the purchase work otherwise.

And all it really knew about the manufacturing of hockey sticks by the early 2000s was that composite sticks were the future of the pro market and that it was cheaper to make those sticks overseas. That left the Hespeler factory especially vulnerable in a changing marketplace. In its various recent identities as Canstar Sports, Bauer, and then Nike Bauer, the plant and its employees had been producing high-level wooden sticks and/or blades for players on every team in the NHL. But as technology improved and preferences began to change irrevocably, they would not be given the chance to adapt to the new trend.

“Possible is a very broad term,” Zimmerman says now when asked if it would have been possible to start manufacturing composite sticks in Hespeler. “I think it being economically feasible is unlikely, and probably was unlikely.”

Hockey's Oldest Business – Since 1847: Chapter 11 – Nike Bauer A lot can happen in just a short period of time in any facet of life, so you can imagine the twists and turns that have fundamentally altered the history of hockey equipment manufacturing since the early 1990s, when Canstar Sports and its many brands – namely Bauer – dominated the industry.

It was a sign of the times. By 2003, the once-thriving hockey stick manufacturing industry in Canada had been whittled down to a handful of survivors.

In addition to Nike Bauer in Cambridge, The Hockey Company, which owned such brands as CCM, Canadien, Jofa, Koho and Titan, had two plants in Quebec. Sherwood was of course also based in Quebec, in its longtime home of Sherbrooke. Louisville Hockey made sticks in Wallaceburg, Ontario.

The industry had provided good careers for its workers, such as Dave Mather, who had been working at the Hespeler factory for 26 years at the time of the closure announcement. Mather was among the many employees who were stunned to learn as their shift ended that they would soon be out of work.

“They’re wondering what’s going to happen to them,” he said of his co-workers. “Me, I’ve been working there since I was 17 years old.” (2)

Mather and others in Hespeler were not ready to give up despite the closure notice, and they began thinking of possible solutions before the machinery would shut down for good.

One interesting idea that emerged in December 2003 would have transformed the factory into a “living museum,” offering visitors the opportunity to watch new hockey sticks being made while perusing the plant’s history through old sticks that had been crafted at different moments in time. It was the brainchild of local historian Paul Langan, and he was led to believe that Nike Bauer was considering the idea after it issued a statement in Zimmerman’s name that paid tribute to the “historical value of the plant” and pledged to “preserve the great stories that have emerged from this factory.” (3)

But Langan’s dream was dashed a few months later when, as production was winding down, he learned from the few workers still inside the factory that most of the stick-making equipment had been removed.

“Nike has already sold the machinery in the plant. Nike has already sold the history, by selling the machinery,” he said bitterly. “It’s gone. The part that will be left will just be a shell.”

Nike’s response was the exact same statement it had issued in December, an indication that Langan’s idea had not been considered at all. (4) Zimmerman doesn’t remember now if the proposal was ever brought to his personal attention.

But even as that idea was falling through, Mather and four other employees were coming up with another plan that Nike Bauer did strongly consider. The five men – plant manager Ross Huehn, Mather, Frank Cavenaugh, Steve Schlitt and Bo Crawford – pooled their money, found a local investor in Mark Fackoury and teamed up with another man named Paul Bossenberry to buy the hockey stick operation, which they named Heritage Wood Specialties Inc. Bossenberry, who had come to know Huehn through his previous employment in machinery sales, became the president.

“It shut down basically the May 24th weekend of 2004,” Crawford said of the factory, where he had been working since 1991. “We took two weeks off and came back in in June and started moving equipment around and rearranging everything. And I think by August or September of 2004, we started receiving orders from Bauer.”

Some of the machinery had indeed been sold off by Nike when it was preparing to exit the market, which the Hespeler employees begrudged because they were still trying to finish filling their existing orders while representatives from their competitors were scavenging the place.

“When Nike was selling all the assets and shutting the business down, we had to let people from Sherwood in, we had people from Sport Maska, which was CCM,” Crawford, who is now the GM of Roustan Sports Ltd., said in an interview. “They came through and said, ‘We want this, we want this, we want that.’ So some of the assets got sold off. Fortunately, there was enough equipment that was left behind for the type of business that Bauer wanted us to do that we were able to carry on.”

One of the assets that had been sold was the building itself, bought by a Cambridge developer, but the business didn’t have to move. In fact, the new owners of Heritage Wood Specialties were able to secure a favorable lease from the developer after Huehn presented him with a business plan that specified what the company could afford to pay. “And we ended up keeping the place going,” Crawford said.

A native of nearby Guelph, where he played three seasons of Jr. B hockey, Crawford attended Conestoga College in Kitchener and earned a diploma in woodworking. He had been laid off from his job building staircases and kitchen cabinets when it was suggested to him that he apply at the Hespeler plant, which was then owned by Canstar Sports. He had never heard of Canstar, and he had no idea that hockey sticks were being made anywhere so close to home.

“I thought, Hespeler? We used to play hockey against Hespeler. Where the hell is there a hockey stick factory?” he said, laughing. “So we drove over and had a look and talked to a few people and put our resumes in, and it all worked out from there.”

Hockey's Oldest Business – Since 1847: Chapter 4 – Hespeler Just as the story of Roustan Sports Ltd. cannot be told without exploring the history of one of its predecessor companies, Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties, the story of Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties likewise cannot be told without some important background information about Hespeler, where hockey sticks were proudly Canadian-made under various banners for a full century.

Crawford thought he would only be there temporarily – just long enough to pay his bills and wait to be recalled to his previous job. But thanks to his education and his practical experience in building, he found himself being cross-trained in different jobs on the Hespeler production floor, where he soon became a lead hand. That eventually led to a supervisory role, and when Nike Bauer announced it was closing the plant, Crawford was lead supervisor. By then, he had also started to learn the business side of operations, so he felt he could make a significant contribution in the new company.

The new owners recognized the need to diversify, which is why they went back to “Wood Specialties” when choosing a name. “Heritage” was another natural, reflecting not only the history of the business but also the owners’ more than 100 years of combined experience in the industry. “People knew who we were, where we came from, the experience we had, they knew our quality,” Crawford said. “The way we manufactured sticks is a little bit different than the way they manufacture them over in Austria, and even versus our competitors, in the construction and everything. Ours was more traditional, which is what people wanted. So I knew it was going to be busy, and I knew we could expand.”

Less than a year after reopening, Heritage Wood Specialties had contracts with several companies, including Nike Bauer, and it employed 17 people who were on track to produce 120,000 sticks in 2005. Ross Huehn told a reporter that he had been working there since 1973 and he wanted to remain involved because of the dedication of employees that he had seen being passed down through the generations.

“Why do you want to retire if you love what you’re doing?” he asked, adding that he personally took pride in being a Canadian manufacturer. “For me, ‘Made in Canada’ is everything. We’ve got to stand up and be counted.” (5)

With Fackoury’s financial backing, Heritage Wood Specialties took over a factory in Cowansville, Quebec, that had been abandoned by The Hockey Company, and it also purchased a plant in Finland. In addition to its contracts with established companies, it also manufactured its own brand of stick, the Alpha.

The company would very much have liked to repatriate the Hespeler brand, which had been lost in the 1970s after Hespeler ceased to exist as an independent municipality and Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties’ corporate identity was cancelled by its absorption into Cooper Canada. The Hespeler stick that was used by numerous NHLers in the 1990s, most notably including Wayne Gretzky, was trademarked by a Toronto entrepreneur and had no connection at all with the community and company it was named after. 

But with success and growth came frustration. Crawford already knew how the business side of things worked, so it wasn’t a surprise that margin rather than quality was the most important consideration for the companies that Heritage Wood Specialties was making sticks for.

“We sat across the table from Bauer one time, and they walked away from a hockey stick over, I think it was 15 cents,” he said. “They wanted us to eat 15 cents. And we said, ‘Well, we’re only at cost plus 12 percent margin.’ These guys said, ‘We’ve got to be at cost plus 40, so we need you to knock 15 cents off that stick.’ And, you know, that doesn’t work. We said, ‘Really, you guys are a massive multi-million-dollar company – you can’t take half a point and eat the 15 cents?’ They would rather drop the model than lose the margins... The companies are basically run by the accountants now, not the other way around.”

Crawford said Heritage’s competitor, ACM Canada of Drummondville, Quebec, found out the hard way that you can only agree to eat so much in such deals. Bauer played the two stick makers off one another, and ACM took the bait.

“They picked whatever they wanted us to make and picked whatever they wanted ACM to make,” Crawford said, referring to Bauer. “And it was all about cost, cost, cost. And ACM said, ‘We want it all.’ So they started undercutting us, and we just said, ‘Well, we’re not going to make it for free. We’re not going to make it at a loss, and this will come back to bite them sooner or later.’ Almost three years to the day after Bauer left us, they came back and said, ‘We want you to start making all of our sticks again. ACM is claiming bankruptcy.’ ”

ACM’s demise proved doubly fruitful for Heritage, which bought some of its assets – fiberglass, handles, paints, etc. – and wound up with not only Bauer’s wooden stick business but also some of CCM’s. But that was Heritage’s last major purchase. A few years earlier, Fackoury had brought in former Cornell University Big Red goaltender Curtis Clairmont to succeed Bossenberry in running the day-to-day operations. A veteran executive who had worked for the 7-11 convenience store chain and Blockbuster Video, Clairmont worked to establish new partnerships, but his main task was to streamline the company and reduce its debt, which necessitated selling the Quebec and Finland factories.

By the time ACM went under in 2016, all of Heritage’s other competitors had also fallen by the wayside. Louisville’s factory in Wallaceburg closed its doors in 2008. Sherwood, which had been making sticks in Sherbrooke, Quebec, since the 1940s, had announced in October 2007 that it would stop mass-production and only fill special orders for the very few NHLers who still used wooden sticks – Jason Spezza of the Ottawa Senators, Patrice Brisebois of the Montreal Canadiens and Paul Stastny of the Colorado Avalanche among them. Most of Sherwood’s wooden stick production was slated to go overseas to Ukraine and the Czech Republic, and the Sherbrooke plant would make only composite sticks going forward. (6)

That was followed by a 2008 bankruptcy that saw the company acquired by a private equity firm. Three years later, all of Sherwood’s remaining stick production was transferred to China, and the Sherbrooke factory was closed. The company itself no longer exists except as a brand now owned by Canadian Tire.

“It’s a reflection of how composite stick making went offshore after manufacturers in Asia started producing much cheaper but good-quality product,” Robin Burns, a former NHL player turned hockey equipment designer and manufacturer, said at the time of Sherwood’s 2011 closure. “It’s not something we as Canadians like to see happening, especially for a product that’s so closely associated with Canada. The traditional Canadian-made hockey stick is certainly becoming a thing of the past.” (7)

That was a concern that even Clairmont had pondered while running what was now Canada’s last mass producer of wooden sticks.

“We are coming to the end of the life cycle of the wood product,” he told a reporter in 2012. “Will we ever see the end of the wood stick? I honestly don’t know.” (8)

What he did know by 2017 was that Heritage Wood Specialties had outlasted all its competitors in the wooden stick business in Canada, and that no new competitors were going to come along given the prohibitive start-up costs that would be associated with such a venture. Ed Seagram had bought and amalgamated four distinct companies into one for less money than it would cost now to buy one specialized but necessary piece of equipment that served only one purpose on the production floor.

Hockey's Oldest Business – Since 1847: Chapter 7 – The Seagrams, Part 2 From a sporting standpoint, the Seagram family of Waterloo was known primarily for thoroughbred horse racing, but they were actually involved in many other activities, and it can be argued that their most lasting impression was on the world of hockey.

That said, Clairmont also recognized that even with no domestic competition, the company had plateaued, and it would be extremely difficult to continue to grow as things were. The aging Hespeler factory, now 110 years old, clearly needed to be modernized or replaced. Either option would require a significant capital investment and take up a substantial amount of time and energy. Neither Clairmont nor Fackoury were particularly keen on continuing to fight those battles. Most of the other original Heritage investor-employees had also already retired or were looking in that direction.

The time had come to sell the business, preferably to a person or an entity that understood hockey and the company’s historic importance to the sport and would look upon Heritage Wood Specialties as a legacy to be protected.

Enter W. Graeme Roustan – the former chairman of Bauer, the owner and publisher of The Hockey News and, most importantly, a lifelong hockey fan. He would pick up the torch as the last mass manufacturer of wooden hockey sticks in Canada. He would become the last man standing on the trail that had been blazed and walked by the Hilborns, the Salyerds, Solon Doolittle, Z.A. Hall, the Seagrams, Jack Cooper, Gerry Wasserman, and so many others.

Jonathon Jackson is a hockey historian based in Guelph, Ontario.

Follow along as we post new chapters of Hockey's Oldest Business – Since 1847 on TheHockeyNews.com.

Read the previous chapter:  Chapter 11 – Nike Bauer

(1) Naomi Powell, “Cambridge hockey stick plant closing,” Kitchener-Waterloo Record, October 3, 2003.

(2) Naomi Powell, “Cambridge hockey stick plant closing.”

(3) Kevin Swayze, “History may save stick plant,” Kitchener-Waterloo Record, December 18, 2003.

(4) Kevin Swayze, “Hockey stick museum suffers a blow,” Kitchener-Waterloo Record, April 7, 2004.

(5) Peter Kuitenbrouwer, “Stick Dreams on the Speed River,” National Post, May 11, 2005.

(6) Bruce Dowbiggin, “Sher-Wood set to lower the lumber,” Calgary Herald, October 13, 2007; Mike King, “Stickhandling change,” Montreal Gazette, January 7, 2008.

(7) Bertrande Marotte, “Sher-Wood follows rivals to China, closes Quebec hockey stick plant,” The Globe and Mail, April 8, 2011.

(8) Joe O’Connor, “Who killed the wooden stick?” National Post, November 17, 2012.