MAURICE BRASSARD & FILS INC.


Maurice Brassard (my father) studied at the Linen school (École du Lin) and got his diplama in 1941.

He worked for the Linen Shop doing quality inspection of the linen generally produced  in the Valley of Richelieu.

The Linen factory had to close after the demand for linen decreased rapidly.
He opened Filature Plessis in 1945 with 3 friends.

A conflict with the co-founder forced him to quit and he bought two 60" carders, subcontracting carding for other woolen factories in the province of Québec.




He worked for the Linen Shop doing quality inspection of the linen
 generally produced  in the Valley of Richelieu.


Click to enlarge

The Linen factory had to close after the demand for linen decreased rapidly.
He opened Filature Plessis in 1945 with 3 friends.

A conflict with the co-founder forced him to quit and he bought two 60" carders, subcontracting carding for other woolen factories in the province of Québec.
 

Click to enlarge

In carding raw material there were often big bobbins of nice yarn.  My mother and grandmother were weaving this yarn but it was more than they could use.

My parents then had the good idea to start selling this yarn through a small
ad in an Agriculture magazine.  Because the yarn was often too fine to
weave with, my father bought a twister and 12 winders.  They quickly found
 new yarn suppliers and increased the quantity of products.

In 1959 they decided to build a new section on to the family
house in order to have a retail store.

A few years after, they built another section in the back and
 moved the twister and winders there.
They got rid of the carders and bought more winders.
They now had 2 full time employees winding the yarn.

In 1977 the demand for handweaving yarn was growing so Maurice and Jeannette, my mother, asked me and my wife, Diane,  if we were
 interested in coming over to help them.

The company Maurice Brassard & Fils Inc. was created
with Maurice as President.

I was not new to the business. I had started very young working during the summers winding yarn. I studied at the St-Hyacinthe Textile School and had always worked in the textile business.
Diane was a nurse but looked forward to starting a new career.

Maurice took care of the production (twister and winders) of the yarn.
Diane did the invoicing, Jeannette took care of the store and
 I prepared the orders and did the shipping.

We quickly realized that the best way to sell the yarn was by mail order.
We become a very good dealer of Nilus Leclerc but the yarn was
our bread and butter .

We published an English price list in order to increase our sale territories.

In 1980, we built a small factory and store.  We now had 3 employees.

Hand Weaving was growing quickly in the 1980's.   We took advantage of this growth to improve our products (more colours, more sizes etc.)  
 Soon we were the largest handweaving yarn store in Canada.