A Hundred Years On A Handshake - Brian Hanington

M. Sullivan and Son, the Arnprior, Ontario-based construction business started in 1914, celebrated a milestone of sorts last year, but who, you ask, outside the enormous Sullivan family, would care? Well, as it turns out, many people, including many outside the local communities permanently improved by the well-run, ethical and generous company. A Hundred Years On A Handshake: The Lively History of M. Sullivan and Son Limited – written and produced by Ottawa’s own Brian Hanington – is the reason that the story of the Sullivans and their adventures will wend its way, perhaps slowly but most certainly, across the provinces and down into the Unites States as time presses on.
The book is just over 300 pages, not counting the name index and ten full pages of image credits. The latter is highly required since almost half of the glossy-pages are, well, I’ll just say it: splendiferous photographs. They depict the colorful people and eras being written about on or near the opposing page.  
     The history of the Sullivans begins with Patrick, born in 1821 into devastating conditions in Ireland. After marrying and having his first child, a son Patrick born in 1839, he and his young wife realized, as did tens of thousands of his countrymen, that staying in Ireland only meant continued pain and hunger. Escape from the devastating potato plant blight, famine and interrelated diseases meant joining the mass migration to Canada’s and America’s clean, inviting shores.
     The enchanting story of the Sullivan business in rural Ontario starts with Maurice – born in 1875, the son of Patrick Jr. – and continues with Maurice’s three sons, Harry, Dominic, and Mort. 
     Organized into twenty-three chapters, the book is also divided into twenty-three alluring time periods, during which the complex but energetic family and its business blossomed, and struggled. For example, the depression and Second World War caused the company to consider closing, but instead it rose mightily to the occasion. It became the only firm in Eastern Ontario to be granted an open supply arrangement with the federal government. Says Hanington, the author: Sullivan and Son “built hangars on airfields, army and flight training schools, messes and barracks for offices and non-commissioned ranks, garages, repairs facilities and gymnasiums.”
     That was then. Before all that war work, the beginnings were humble indeed. A young Maurice – anxious to enter the building field, but shut out of major projects in Arnprior by more established and well-connected architects and builders from Ottawa – actually chose to begin small. He heard of a church – St. Thomas Anglican Church to be exact – needing re-building after a fire. It was located in the tiny nearby community of Woodlawn. Maurice had six men willing to join him “and a horse named Fred ready to haul whatever needed hauling.” But he had two problems: He didn’t have a former project as a reference, and second, he was Irish Catholic. He overcame those handicaps by convincing the open-minded Reverend and the re-building committee with a dynamic and well-prepared presentation. The adorable stone-walled church still stands proudly to this day.
     Over and over again, Maurice and his sons and their growing company proved that what they lacked in experience they could more than make up for in quality. And they had plenty of encouragement: all around them in the Ottawa Valley “were buildings badly built. Stables, barns, sheds, huts, houses, halls, bridges, dams, trestles; for anything that could be constructed there were people ready to do a mediocre job at an attractively low price.”
     For Maurice, satisfactory was never good enough. Obsessively meticulous in every job he did, he carried with him “a profound sense of personal responsibility and a family history of Catholic guilt. That perfectionism was passed on to his children in the business as well as all his employees, who came to appreciate and emulate his formidable standards.”
     The list of projects Sullivan and Son has completed using their precision work style over the last one hundred years is awesome. They include everything from the Royal Kingston Curling Club to the Queen’s University School of Medicine, and a lot in between: the Prescott border crossing (into the United States), Kingston Police headquarters, Belleville General Hospital, Arnprior Solar Farm, Lennox and Addington County General Hospital, North Bay Memorial Gardens Arena, and the Ontario Court of Justice building in Pembroke, Ontario.
     The book might not be what some readers consider exciting reading, but the writing flows like Alberta McManus’ delicious homemade Marionberry jam. And for sure the expanding family of Sullivans – both inside and outside the company – will proudly read the wonderful hard cover volume for generations to come.    

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