Jack Cooper owned what had been Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties Ltd. for 15 years, and it was only one aspect of the sporting goods empire that carried his name, but he absolutely left his mark on the Hespeler hockey stick factory and the people who worked there. To this day, Larry Koabel, who began working at the Hespeler factory in 1974, prefers to refer to his first boss not as Jack but as 'Mr. Cooper' or 'The Chief.' A portrait of Cooper hangs on the wall of Koabel’s office at Roustan Sports Ltd. [https://roustansports.com/], the successor company to Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties [https://thehockeynews.com/news/money-and-power/hockey-s-oldest-business-since-1847-introduction]. These are signs of deep respect for a man who gave so much not only to the factory but to the people who worked for him. “Mr. Cooper taught me a lot about your attitude toward your customers,” Koabel, who is now Roustan Sports’ purchasing manager, said in an interview. “Nothing happened until there was a sale – he always said that. And he always said the customer was always right. Even when they weren’t right, you had to work with them in order to make something that was good for both of you.” Koabel has a diploma in wood technology from Conestoga College in Kitchener, and he remembers that someone from Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties came to the college to recruit workers from the wood technology program. Koabel applied and was hired, and his first job at the factory was drying lumber. In 1975, he was asked to start the plant’s first quality control program. He quickly learned there was more to the job than just the physical requirements. “He was a little bit staunch and old-fashioned,” he said of Jack Cooper. “I had to keep a tie hanging on the hook behind the door in my office in case he showed up. When you’re working on a production floor with lots of saws and stuff, the last thing you want around your neck is a tie. But with Mr. Cooper, as one of his middle managers of sorts, he expected that of his people. He was prim and proper.” Ross Johnston, another longtime Cooper employee, started with the company in 1977 at its factory in Toronto, where items like hockey gloves and goalie equipment were made. He also developed a deep admiration for The Chief. “I remember when I was a production manager, a supervisor in the factory. I had probably 150 people in my area,” Johnston said in an interview. “He said to me one day, ‘These people here, they go home every night. I want them to go home feeling good about where they work. And I want them to feel secure. And you need to respect them.’ That was a lecture I got when I first started with the company.” It speaks volumes that although Cooper was a titan of Canadian business, former employees still remember him most fondly for their personal interactions with him. Perhaps that had to do with Cooper’s own humble beginnings. Jack Cooper was born on April 27, 1912, at his family’s home on D’Arcy Street in Toronto, close to Dundas Street and Spadina Avenue. (1) His parents were English immigrants, and his father was a pipe fitter who later worked as a mechanic at an automobile dealership. Jack, the oldest of three sons, had an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age; his first job, at age 4, was stoking fires for Jewish neighbors on the Sabbath, a task for which he was paid four cents. (2) Later, the Cooper family moved across Toronto into a home on Gillard Street, in the Greenwood-Danforth-Coxwell area near Monarch Park. Jack attended high school at Riverdale Collegiate Institute, but he left at age 16 and took a job at Eaton’s department store, working as a salesman in the leather goods department. (3) That’s where he met Robert Henderson 'R.H.' Cameron, an established entrepreneur who was behind several businesses in Toronto and who had served for many years on the city’s Board of Control. One of Cameron’s businesses was General Leather Goods Ltd., which he started on Bathurst Street in 1905. (4) By the time Cooper became acquainted with him, Cameron had moved his thriving leather business to larger premises on Laughton Avenue, south of St. Clair, at the current location of St. Paul VI Catholic School. Cooper left Eaton’s and joined General Leather in 1932, becoming the company’s first travelling salesman. He criss-crossed Canada hawking a variety of products – men’s wallets, women’s purses, key cases and a small selection of sporting goods, including rudimentary hockey shin pads that retailed for 50 cents a pair. (5) Cooper was a successful salesman right away, returning from his first trip with orders valued at $600. By 1938, with Cooper still the company’s only representative on the road, General Leather reached $100,000 in sales. Eight years later, with Cameron nearing 80 years of age, Cooper teamed up with another employee named Cecil Weeks, and they purchased the business, changing its name to Cooper-Weeks Ltd. Cooper remained in charge of sales, and Weeks oversaw the factory operations, but in 1954, they parted ways, and Cooper took full control, although he didn’t change the company’s name to Cooper Canada Ltd. until 1968. (6) Gradually, sporting goods became a major focus of the company, even though Jack Cooper was too busy to actually watch sporting events; his son John noted after Jack’s passing that work had taken up so much of his time, he had made perhaps only three or four visits to Maple Leaf Gardens during his lifetime. (7) Johnston said Cooper really wasn’t much of a sports fan in the first place; apparently, that had mainly been the purview of Weeks. “They built CCM equipment under contract,” Johnston said of the partnership. “And then, as I recall, the contract ran out and they said, ‘OK, now we're in the hockey equipment business, sporting goods.’ I got the impression that Mr. Weeks was the sporting goods guy, and Mr. Cooper was the leather goods guy.” Cooper’s lack of intimate familiarity with sports and sporting venues did not adversely impact his knowledge of his products, his markets and his company’s relationships with its customers. For example, Johnston noted that dealers were never compelled to take on more product than they thought they could handle. “If there was a dealer who wanted to buy one baseball bat, he could buy one,” he said, pointing out that sales departments would normally require a customer to buy in bulk – even a small number like six, 10, or 12. “But he said, ‘No, a small dealer needs to be able to buy one at a time.’ There were things like that, that ran through the company, that a business student would say, ‘What?’ But that was his approach.” Hockey's Oldest Business – Since 1847: Introduction [https://deweb-519a7.b-cdn.net/post-images/f6f6960d-36b4-4522-b9bf-7f9d8b1303f7.webp] Hockey's Oldest Business – Since 1847: Introduction Geoff Seagram turned 88 years old in January 2025, but he still remembers the joy of getting a new Canadian-made wooden hockey stick for Christmas when he was a kid. [https://thehockeynews.com/news/money-and-power/hockey-s-oldest-business-since-1847-introduction] Once Cooper decided to change the company’s name to Cooper Canada in 1968, things began to evolve very quickly. Production moved again to a new plant on Alliance Avenue, in the Jane Street and St. Clair Avenue area. Cooper then took the privately held company public, although he and his family retained most of the shares. The next step was expansion, and that process began with Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties Ltd. Cooper had been buying St. Marys baseball bats from Hespeler St. Marys for several years when he became aware that he might be able to purchase the factory, a move that would give him control of manufacturing not only bats but also hockey sticks. He knew that the production and supply of sticks would dovetail with the company’s motto, “The World Plays Hockey with Cooper.” “And so, if you play hockey with Cooper, it should be everything, head to toe,” Johnston said. “The sweater business was part of that. We later bought Winnwell because they were in the sweater business. It was a natural extension.” In the spring of 1972, Jack Cooper and his son John, a company executive, sat down at the Westmount Golf and Country Club in Kitchener-Waterloo with Gordon Durnan, the executive vice-president of Canada Barrels and Kegs. According to Johnston, who was told the story by John Cooper, a cash and stock purchase deal was quickly drawn up on the back of a napkin. The deal was finalized on June 1 and was first announced in the Toronto Star on June 5. (8) After more than 40 years of Seagram family ownership and stewardship [https://thehockeynews.com/news/money-and-power/hockey-s-oldest-business-since-1847-chapter-6-the-seagrams-part-2], Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties became a Cooper Canada-owned entity. Operations got off to a strong start under the new ownership, but things got shaky after that. Production exceeded one million sticks per year, and profits also soared to more than $1 million. Exports to the United States increased from 5 percent of production to 20 percent. (9) Cooper also began to put its stamp on its Hespeler-made products, but this proved to be a costly misstep for the Hespeler factory’s new owners. It’s fair to say that Hespeler sticks were a budget brand – good for minor, junior and senior hockey teams of the era, but NHL and World Hockey Association players weren’t using them. Back then, the major stick brands used by pros were either Quebec-made or American-made: Sherwood, Victoriaville, Northland and Christian. The Hespeler names on the sticks were replaced by the Cooper name, along with some colors and graphics. The idea was to market them as high-end sticks – and it was a bad idea. “I don’t blame him for wanting to put Cooper on the sticks,” Koabel said, noting that Cooper’s name was on every other piece of hockey equipment his plants manufactured, “but they did have trouble marketing the sticks.” John Cooper lamented the decision in speaking with Johnston recently. “He said, ‘Well, we learned that we knew a lot about sewing things together and molding things, but we didn’t know anything about wood.’ He said, ‘You only get a chance to introduce yourself once.’ They kind of blew it in terms of the product.” A Kitchener-Waterloo Record article from November 1974 claimed the Cooper sticks weren’t even as good as the ones they had replaced. Ted Stremble, the trainer of the Hespeler Shamrocks Jr. B team, was quoted as saying the players had broken an astounding 360 sticks in one week of practices. “After that, we just scrapped the rest and went to another brand,” he said. “When the company made Hespeler sticks, we never used anything else, and you could hardly break them.” (10) The trainer of the Cambridge Hornets Sr. A team said much the same thing. “It’s the quality of sticks that’s changed, not just the name,” said Tom Hewer. “The first batches after Cooper took over were all right, then the quality of the wood was no good anymore.” Local sporting goods retailers told the Record that they had stopped carrying the Cooper sticks due to their unreliability, higher prices and a corresponding lack of interest from the buying public. (11) The real blow, though no one recognized it at the time, was the abandonment of the Hespeler brand name, which coincided with the end of the town of Hespeler’s independence. On January 1, 1973, it was incorporated along with nearby Galt and Preston into the new city of Cambridge. Five years later, in 1978, Cooper Canada went through an amalgamation of its own when it officially absorbed Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties Ltd. and ended its status as a subsidiary. This step, as reported by The Globe and Mail, was “designed to clean up the corporate structure.” (12) The disappearance of Hespeler as a town and as a corporate entity would become an issue in later years for Cooper’s successor company, and this will be discussed in more depth in a later chapter. But in the meantime, Cooper was not thinking too much about potential problems in the future because it was having enough problems with sticks in the present. The company continued to fail in its efforts to produce and sell new designs, most notably with a model called the Dynaglass. Johnston had joined the company by then and said it was a fiasco. “I remember all the Dynaglass hockey sticks coming back – like, they were coming back faster than they were being shipped out. Some of the dealers just didn't want them anymore. And we brought out a next generation stick, which was called a Magnum. It was a nice stick, a good stick. But by then, we had kind of soiled our reputation, our market . . . and the salesforce lost faith, too.” In years and decades past, fires and other occupational hazards had been the main causes for concern at the Hespeler plant and at its predecessor factories. Marketing was an entirely new problem. But someone at the plant eventually did get through to Cooper Canada that they could, in fact, produce good and marketable sticks if they only had the freedom and the ability to do so. “We did get more of a free hand to design and build different projects, and it did help,” Koabel said. “We weren’t successful in everything, but we sure learned a lot when we weren’t.” Hockey's Oldest Business – Since 1847: Chapter 4 – Hespeler [https://deweb-519a7.b-cdn.net/post-images/2c69a43d-581d-461b-bd9f-3b825c1acb45.jpeg] 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. [https://thehockeynews.com/news/money-and-power/hockey-s-oldest-business-since-1847-chapter-4-hespeler] Part of Koabel’s quality control program entailed standardizing stick designs and production. Prior to Cooper’s takeover, there was little consistency in production at Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties. Sticks were soaked in hot water – not steamed – and then blades were bent by hand before being placed in the kiln to dry. “There were no two curves the same,” Koabel said. “They would say, you get to pick the curve you want.” But that needed to change with the NHL having put an end to the notorious “banana blade” era by mandating that curves on stick blades could not exceed one half-inch. (The more adventurous WHA, always looking for ways to stand apart from the older and more established league, set a limit of an inch and a half.) The workers in Hespeler had many years of experience in making sticks – in some cases, they’d been working there since before Koabel was born – and it was tough to convince them of the need to do things differently. “They didn’t want to change, but they should have wanted to change,” he said, noting that the plant was nowhere close to reaching its potential at that time. “Canada Barrels and Kegs didn’t sell it because they were making lots of money. They sold it because it was flat on its ass, basically.” One thing Hespeler St. Marys Wood Specialties did have going for it was that it paid better than most other local factories, and most of its workers lived in Hespeler with families and mortgages. The security of the job was important to them. But it was piecework – “and you had to work for your money,” Koabel said. “As simple as that.” Once the workers came around, improvements soon followed. Johnston said one major hockey stick success was the direct result of Koabel’s wood technology expertise and his ingenuity. “He started laminating different lightweight materials together and came up with, we called it the Superpro Light, and it was an incredibly light goalie stick,” Johnston said. “It took over much of the NHL back in that day. That was Larry’s work.” The Superpro Light was indeed a favorite of NHL goalies, and it paved the way for the successful reintroduction of a Cooper brand of sticks through the 1980s. This time, they were marketed far more sensibly, and they were received well as a result. “It was a damned nice line of hockey sticks,” Johnston said while flipping through a 1987 Cooper catalogue he still owns. “It wasn’t one of the premier brands, but everyone was very proud of the product that was being built there.” Logistics were also improved, with lumber being brought right into the factory by the old Canadian National Railways spur line that had still been owned by the Grand Trunk when it was first built. Finished products were shipped out by truck. Cooper had a warehouse in Lewiston, New York, and distribution to its American customers originated from there. The lesson, as John Cooper related to Johnston, was a simple one: “Things got a lot better when the guys in Toronto just let the guys in Hespeler do their jobs.” Paul Newman in the 1977 classic film Slap Shot. He is holding a Cooper hockey stick that was made at the historic stick factory in Hespeler. (Courtesy of Universal Studios) [https://deweb-519a7.b-cdn.net/post-images/e0cafda7-7559-4c4a-bfab-f199aaf17da7.jpeg] Paul Newman in the 1977 classic film Slap Shot. He is holding a Cooper hockey stick that was made at the historic stick factory in Hespeler. (Courtesy of Universal Studios) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By the mid-1980s, everything seemed to be well in Cooper’s world. Whatever problems had befallen the company’s sticks in the previous decade were merely bad memories. Expansion had continued with, as mentioned, the purchase of rival manufacturer Winnwell. Cooper had also scored a coup with significant product placement – gloves, pads and sticks – in the 1977 film Slap Shot, merely the greatest hockey movie ever made. Lots of photos exist online of star Paul Newman sporting a Hespeler-made stick with the Cooper brand prominently featured. “Wasn’t that great?” Johnston asked of the movie, laughing. “That was like a billboard for Cooper.” An even more prominent showcase for the company was Cooperalls, a revolutionary product that was intended to replace traditional hockey pants with a girdle that extended from a player’s waist to their knees, coupled with an outer shell that manifested as a pair of long pants. They were incredibly popular starting in the early 1980s, and all of Canada’s major junior teams wore them in games. In the NHL, Cooper designed a shorter version of the outer shell for the Montreal Canadiens [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/montreal-canadiens] to wear, while the Hartford Whalers and the Philadelphia Flyers [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/philadelphia-flyers] began to use a similar product that became known as Cooperalls, even though they actually weren’t. “We’ve been fortunate enough that our name has almost become generic,” Johnston, a product manager at the time, said in a 1983 interview published in the Toronto Star. “Even our competitors’ products (and there are several) are called Cooperalls.” (13) History has proven Johnston right – when long hockey pants from the 1980s are remembered or revived, as they are on occasion, they are almost always referred to as Cooperalls. The Whalers and the Flyers were actually wearing pants manufactured by CCM, and the final piece of Cooper’s head-to-toe hockey strategy was to be the acquisition of that company. CCM, based in St-Jean, Quebec, had gone bankrupt in 1982, and Jack Cooper wanted its hockey division for its skate manufacturing operation, which he intended to move to the Alliance Avenue plant in Toronto. He and John thought they had it after placing a $5-million bid for the company, but the Quebec government stepped in and facilitated a sale that kept CCM in that province. Disappointed but not discouraged, Cooper president Henry Nolting vowed that the company would keep looking for an opportunity to get into the skate business. (14) They found it in 1983 with the purchase of Roos Manufacturing, a skate company based in Kitchener. At the same time, Don Bauer was hired as a consultant and as a Cooper company director who would reportedly be involved in design and development of the new Cooper Roos skates. Bauer’s father had founded the company that made skates that still bear the family name today, and Don had continued to work for Bauer long after that company was sold to another Kitchener-based firm in 1965, so his expertise in the field was unquestioned. Jack Cooper saw the new relationship as a personal triumph. “I’ve long dreamed about the Bauers and the Coopers getting together in business, but I didn’t dream it would happen this way,” he said at the time. (15) Unfortunately, the Roos deal was another well-intentioned move that did not pan out. Roos only made the boots for skates in its Kitchener plant; the blades were forged elsewhere and had to be shipped in and affixed to the boots. Much to Jack Cooper’s frustration, Roos’ blade supplier turned out to be CCM – the company he had wanted but couldn’t have. When all was said and done, Johnston said, CCM was reportedly making more money off a purchase of Roos skates than Cooper was. Although Cooper Canada was still profitable, sales and revenues began to decline as Jack Cooper, nearing his 75th birthday, was slowly removing himself from the firm’s day-to-day operations. The company was also losing out on valuable income that Johnston said would have been generated if The Chief hadn’t been so firmly opposed to paying athletes to endorse his products – one example was Mario Lemieux, who Johnston says had worn Cooper skates until CCM came along with an endorsement deal that he signed. Soon, the company that had grown through expansion to become the world’s largest manufacturer of hockey equipment was itself a target for acquisition. In April 1987, it was announced that Charan Industries Inc. of Montreal, headed by partners Earl Takefman and Sol Zuckerman, would buy Cooper Canada for $36 million. (16) Jack and John Cooper both announced they were happy with the deal. It entailed John stepping up into his father’s position as chairman and chief executive officer and committing to remain with the company, which was to be operated as a separate entity under the Charan umbrella. Koabel and Johnston also remained, although their sentiments were not the same as those of the Coopers – Koabel described his reaction as shock, and Johnston said he was heartbroken. They understood that things would necessarily change under Charan, although not necessarily for the better – we’ll have much more on that in the next chapter. Jack Cooper’s stewardship of the hockey stick factory came to an end with the sale of his company, but his era is a very important one in the history of Roustan Sports Ltd. and in the history of manufacturing wooden hockey sticks in Canada. It’s gratifying to speak with people like Koabel and Johnston and get a sense of the type of man he was. Johnston shared his memory of the last time he spoke with Cooper, by telephone in the mid-1990s. “After that, I just sent him a note that said how much I appreciated working with him. He would never say, ‘work for me,’ ” Johnston said. “ ‘You don't work for me, you work with me.’ And I sent him a letter just to say how much I appreciated that. Not long after that, he passed away, and I felt really good that I had a chance to express that to him.” Inducted into the Order of Canada in 1985 and into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame in 1989, Jack Cooper was 83 years old when he died in his native Toronto on July 29, 1995. His name no longer dominates the Canadian sporting goods industry, but it lives on, particularly in the hearts and memories of those who grew up wearing his hockey equipment and even scoring goals with his Hespeler-made, Cooper-branded hockey sticks. That’s a legacy that we believe would have pleased him. 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 7 – The Seagrams, Part 2 [https://thehockeynews.com/news/money-and-power/hockey-s-oldest-business-since-1847-chapter-6-the-seagrams-part-1] Read the next chapter: Chapter 9 – Canstar Sports 1 [https://thehockeynews.com/news/money-and-power/hockey-s-oldest-business-since-1847-chapter-9-canstar-sports-1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Although he was also known throughout his life as John Cooper, he was registered at birth as Jack Charles Cooper. See: “Ontario, Canada Births, 1832-1917 – York County, 1908-1912,” Ancestry.ca (2) Tracey Tyler, “Jack Cooper outfitted NHL stars,” Toronto Star, July 31, 1995. (3) James Gray, “Cooper is game to expand in the sporting goods field,” Toronto Star, January 11, 1983. (4) “Many New Companies,” The Globe, March 6, 1905. (5) “Cooper made mark on Canada’s national sport,” Financial Post, April 10, 1989. (6) Cooper made mark on Canada’s national sport”; James Gray, “Cooper is game to expand in the sporting goods field”; Martin Dewey, “Cooper confident of turnaround after bumpy year,” The Globe and Mail, May 12, 1980. (7) Tyler, “Jack Cooper outfitted NHL stars.” (8) “Company Reports,” Toronto Star, June 5, 1972; “Corporate Reports,” The Globe and Mail, June 7, 1972. (9) Martin Dorrell, “Popularity of hockey in U.S. expanding Canadian business,” The Globe and Mail, March 21, 1973. (10) Gerald Wright, “Change in name, quality blamed for plant layoff,” Kitchener-Waterloo Record, November 27, 1974. (11) Wright, “Change in name.” (12) “Alcan profit increases to $206,200,000,” The Globe and Mail, October 20, 1978. (13) Allan Ryan, “Cooperalls, Gretzky jersey big sellers,” Toronto Star, January 6, 1983. (14) James Gray, “Cooper is game to expand in the sporting goods field.” (15) Henry Koch, “Kitchener skate plant may expand following sale to Toronto company,” Kitchener-Waterloo Record, February 4, 1983. (16) Ann Gibbon, “Charan to buy Cooper Canada for $36 million,” Montreal Gazette, April 7, 1987; Mathew Horsman, “Cooper, Charan ‘both saw good deal,’” Financial Post, April 13, 1987. (17) Kenneth Kidd, “Cooper Canada holders pave way for takeover,” Toronto Star, May 2, 1987; Ann Gibbon, “Why hustle decided to wed complacency,” Montreal Gazette, May 16, 1987.
