We were re-cycling when few ever thought about it!
The following article was printed in 1971 and is included here for
interest. We were a 6 year old Company and looking for new and unique methods of
supplying builders and renovators with brick and masonry product. The city of
Hamilton had begun widening York Street at Dundurn from a 2 lane road to a
much larger arterial road. This meant that huge numbers of old brick homes
needed to be demolished. The brick from these homes were taken down by
bulldozers and backhoes and taken away in dump trucks to be used for fill
down at the Bay.
Most of the brick was still in excellent shape even after having been roughly
handled and dumped and the original mortar came off easily with a brick hammer.
The brick quality was sound, and it looked great when a brick mason laid it back
up again.
Enter our founder John F. Meehan, known to everyone as "Jack". He
had a fantastic group of energetic and hard working employees and partners who
saw the potential for re-cycling brick!
Instead of bulldozing the brick, we developed a network of "Brick
Chippers", hard working people who carefully peeled the brick from the
walls, chipped off the mortar and piled it onto the skids for removal to our
yard in Burlington. Throughout the 70's and 80's we reclaimed brick from all
over Southern Ontario as far west as Kincardine, east to Scarborough and south to Niagara Falls. We
have distributed literally millions and millions of Reclaimed brick since the
late 60's and still distribute it today.
Assembled above as it was originally printed in 1971 - click on a link to read
text or view pictures.
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