Inside Canada’s last hockey stick factory: How a 200-year-old business is battling against Trump’s tariffs
It’s a typical day on the job for the 15 workers at Canada’s last major hockey stick factory, 60 miles (100 kilometers) southwest of Toronto.
A worker, wearing protective gloves and earplugs, feeds lengths of wood into a machine that makes an earsplitting whine as it automatically cuts a groove into the end of each piece.
Nearby, stacks of wooden wedges wait to be slotted into those grooves to form the beginnings of a hockey stick.
Further down the Roustan Hockey production line, other workers are busy shaping, trimming, sanding, painting and screen printing as they turn lumber into a Canadian national symbol.
The operation has origins that date back to the 1800s and has survived decades of trade globalization to hang on as the last North American commercial manufacturer of traditional wooden hockey sticks. Now it’s facing fresh headwinds from the trade war launched by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has ripped up free trade deals in North America and imposed tariffs on Canadian exports.
The uncertainty is making life a headache for Roustan.
“You never know” what Trump will do, said Bo Crawford, the factory’s general manager. “You just have to roll with it and the president of the U.S. can change his mind day to day, week to week, hour to hour. So yeah, we have to deal with it the best we can,” he said.
Roustan has spent months dealing with U.S. customer worries and navigating the trade challenges.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to impose tariffs on Canadian imports, though many goods have ultimately remained exempted because they’re already covered by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiated during his first term.
Then, in late August, the Trump administration eliminated a widely used customs exemption for international shipments worth $800 that resulted in new uncertainty over cross-border trade, said owner and CEO Graeme Roustan.
“Even if somebody buys one or two or five or 10 sticks and it’s under $100, they’re going to be affected by the tariffs, so the jury is still out on how that’s going to impact business,” Roustan said.
Roustan Hockey’s factory churns out about 400,000 wooden hockey sticks a year under the Christian, Northland and Sherwood brands, with about 100,000 exported to the United States. It also makes plastic-bladed road hockey sticks and foam-core goalie sticks.
Crawford said shipments to the U.S. have been held up for manual inspections at the border, where they’ve been hit with surprise tariffs, which the company’s customs broker has managed to get waived.
It’s not just sticks. Shipments of goalie pads, which Roustan manufactures at a separate factory in Toronto, were recently flagged for an unexpected 200 per cent tariff, which company managers said they’re trying to resolve with new forms from their shipping company.
