The Dominion & Grimm Company is one of the longest continually operating maple syrup evaporator and equipment companies in Canada. The company began when in October of 1892 it was announced that G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Company, incorporated out of Ohio, had opened a branch in Montreal Canada located at 63 to 67 King Street with W.A. Morrison as the initial factory manager. A year before the company also expanded into Vermont, opening a factory in Rutland.
As a branch of the American based Grimm company, the Montreal based Grimm facility manufactured the same Champion Evaporators as were being made in the original Grimm factory in Hudson, Ohio and in the new factory in Rutland. With the expansion to Vermont and Quebec, company founder Gustav H. Grimm focused their operations in Rutland and Montreal and sold the Ohio portion of the company in 1895.
In 1900, another company split was made and G.H. Grimm’s cousin, John H. Grimm bought the controlling interest in the G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Co. branch in Montreal. John H. Grimm then personally relocated to Montreal from Rutland to lead his new venture. Earlier in the year, John H. Grimm was listed in the 1900 census as a foreman in Grimm’s Rutland factory. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, John H. Grimm brought his two younger brothers Charles E. Grimm and Henry E. Grimm on board to help run the company in Montreal.
There were now two Grimm companies on either side of the border, more or less selling the same maple sugaring equipment and supplies designed by Gustav H. Grimm. However, the Rutland Company now referred to itself as simply G. H. Grimm Co. with no use of the word manufacturing; whereas the Montreal company was known as Grimm Manufacturing Co., LTD., having dropped the G.H. initials.
Directories for Montreal show G.H. Grimm at 63 to 67 King Street in the 1890s. By 1901 the company had moved to 84 Wellington St and by 1908 was at 58 Wellington. It remained at that address on the corner of Wellington St and Queen Street until it was purchased and consolidated with the Dominion Evaporator Company.
In October of 1910, the Grimm brothers formally incorporated the Grimm Manufacturing Company, Limited under the laws of Canada with an initial capital stock of $150,000. The stockholders included J. H. Grimm, Charles E. Grimm, Henry E. Grimm, Wendell E. Grimm, and Charles E. Moore, all from Montreal at that time.
John H. Grimm became a tireless advocate for better labelling laws and fighting against unscrupulous adulteration of maple syrup. His efforts were instrumental in the Province of Quebec passing a strict purity in labelling law that went into effect in 1915. As a prominent leader in the industry in Quebec as one of the largest manufacturing firms, he also strongly promoted cleanliness as a key to producing a better quality maple sugar and syrup. Grimm also was instrumental in forming an early co-op and producer’s association out of Waterloo, known as the Maple Tree Producers Association, LTD. This association and co-op formed to collectively market their maple syrup and work together to improve their quality and promote a label with assured purity. In time, Grimm bought out all of the members of this association and installed his own canning and bottling works at their Wellington Street facility.
To encourage maple producers and promote his ideals of improvement in the methods of manufacturing syrup and sugar, Grimm put up $500 in prize money for a syrup and sugar contest in 1913. Over 500 samples of Canadian syrup and over 200 samples of sugar competed for the prizes. A recent article that covers some of the history of Canada’s early maple co-ops provides additional detail on this aspect of John H. Grimm’s role in moving the Canadian maple industry forward.
John H. Grimm died in August 1941 at Grimmaple Lodge, his summer home near Mount Loyal, Quebec at the age of 77, a few months after the death of his wife. With his death, his brother Charles E. Grimm assumed the role of company president. Charles E. Grimm died only a few years later June 1943 in Montreal.
Ten years later, the Grimm family heirs and remaining shareholders of the Grimm Manufacturing Company sold the company to Sylva LeBrun of Montreal in 1952. LeBrun had started the Dominion Evaporator Company in Montreal in 1940 after selling off his interests in his earlier company, LeBrun – Lussier out of Waterloo, Quebec. The story of the LeBrun – Lussier company is covered in an earlier post in this series. In December 1953 it was announced that LeBrun had formed a new company called Dominion & Grimm, Inc. headquartered on Delorimier Street in Montreal.
In combining the Grimm Manufacturing Company with the Dominion Evaporator Company, LeBrun brought together many years of experience and customer satisfaction. Together as one, Dominion & Grimm was able to offer a wide selection of maple sugaring supplies ranging from his own evaporator and arch designs, to those of the Champion evaporators and well-known Grimm cans, covers, spiles, and tanks.
Sylva LeBrun patented his own sap spout design in 1955 (CA510618), which became a mainstay in Canadian sugarbushes. Dominion & Grimm was known for carrying a wide array of spout styles. Hale Mattoon’s excellent book from 2017 titled Maple Spouts Spiles Taps & Tools contains a nice series of illustrations of the assortment of LeBrun designs and D & G inventory.
At some point, possibly after the formation of Dominion & Grimm, the company added home and commercial canning and sterilizing equipment as well as animal feed troughs and other assorted farm supplies to the products they sold.
Deteriorating health forced Sylva LeBrun into a kind of semi-retirement in the mid-1950s before he passed away in July 1958. In 1962, Dominion & Grimm, Inc. was sold to the Boileau family. A few years later, in 1966, the company relocated from Delorimier Street to a more modern and larger factory location in an industrial park in the Montreal neighborhood of Ville d’Anjou, where it remains to this day.
With the passing of Mr. Boileau in 1984, his daughter sold the company to long time manager Marcel Pepin and the company has remained in his hands to this day. Additional manufacturing sites have been established in Victoriaville and Thetford Mines, Quebec as well as warehouse and sales facilities in St. Albans, Vermont. In recent years the company has diversified beyond only equipment for the maple syrup industry to begin manufacturing biogas production equipment and the company now employs as many as 130 people.
