Sixty-five years in the Cowichan Valley
It started as a building supply store selling materials to local contractors. The house packages, the wall system and the shipments across the Pacific all came later, and all came from the same place.
How a supply store became a house manufacturer
The construction industry has changed a great deal across those years. What has not changed is that everything is still made in Cobble Hill.
Ken McKinnon founds Pacific Builders' Supplies
Selling a variety of building materials in the Cowichan Valley, British Columbia. Everything that followed grew out of this one store.
The 1952 Chev delivery truck
One truck, and suddenly the whole of Vancouver Island is within reach. It was a 1952 Chev that Andy Simard had used in logging and put into the fledgling store as his equity; his name and the phone number, 19, are still on the door. Its assisted mechanical brakes faded going down a hill fully loaded, which made the Malahat an education. It went back to Andy, then to Cliff Latter’s forested acreage, and when Cliff’s son Paul joined Pacific Homes in 2004 he mentioned the rusting truck on his parents’ property. We bought it back. Tony Hill, a mechanic at Pacific Builders for years, restored it over almost two years, original engine and most of the frame intact, in time for the company’s 50th anniversary in 2009. After several years on display in the Duncan store it was donated to the Cowichan Forest Discovery Museum in 2011, where it remains.
A larger location
Pacific Builders' Supplies moves to a new site to meet growing demand.
Pacific Truss is founded
Ken McKinnon founds Pacific Truss, making it the oldest truss manufacturer on Vancouver Island. Roof engineering has been done in house ever since, which is why the roof and the walls of a package are designed to each other rather than sourced separately.
Pacific Homes begins
Ken founds Pacific Homes and develops a custom home building process that was unusual in the industry at the time and still sets the standard the company works to. The first prefabricated home package was built and delivered on site in Terrace, British Columbia.
By the division’s 30th anniversary it had manufactured homes from 500 to 14,000 square feet and supplied Alaska, California, Korea, Israel and Mongolia among many other places. Ken McKinnon started all three businesses.
One of four in the country to computerize
Pacific Building Supplies becomes one of only four building supply stores in Canada to pioneer a computer system, built for engineering and drafting in the truss division. It was later folded into the custom home building process, which is the origin of the 3D engineering the company still runs on.
The first shipment across the Pacific
A house package leaves for Japan. That single shipment established an international market that still exists, and the relationships have since extended to Korea, Israel, Mongolia and beyond. How delivery works now.
The wall system that became SmartWall®
Pacific Homes creates its pre-insulated wall system, later named the Pacific SmartWall. It reaches award winning levels of energy efficiency within a simple prefabricated system. The test data.
Truline Truss
The company purchases Truline Truss in Creston, British Columbia, expanding volume to meet consistently growing demand.
A new truss plant in Cobble Hill
Built on site with a computerized linear saw, laser guidance for precise construction and a conveyor system for efficiency. The equipment has been updated continually since. You can walk through it.
Shipping warehouse, and a corporate umbrella
A new shipping warehouse and loading bay, built to keep up with international shipments. Pacific Building Systems is established as the umbrella covering all the Pacific Group divisions.
Fifty years of Pacific Builders’ Supplies
The 50th anniversary of the original store. The 1952 Chev delivery truck is restored for the occasion by Tony Hill, at many times its original factory price, and goes on display in the Duncan store.
The Langford sales office
Opened close to Victoria so Build Specialists could serve clients in the Capital Region directly.
Ken McKinnon dies, aged 92
The founder of Pacific Builders’ Supplies, Pacific Truss and Pacific Homes died on June 10, 2017. His sons’ eulogy, and the Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award that summed up how he saw the business, are on his own page.
Joining the All-Fab Group
Pacific Homes, Pacific Truss and Truline Truss join the All-Fab Group, connecting the company with clients across Canada and beyond, and adding building experience alongside the decades already accumulated on Vancouver Island.
Ken McKinnon, 1925 to 2017
A tail gunner on a Lancaster before he was twenty, a farmer, a logger and a car salesman after, and at 34 the man who opened a building supply store in a village with eighteen potential customers. He started the first roof truss plant on Vancouver Island, sat on the Canadian Wood Council, and told the Chamber of Commerce that the best thing you can do for your community is provide interesting, well-paying jobs for the people who live there.
Read about KenStill made in Cobble Hill
The company is thriving locally and internationally, and the values that got it there have not moved. Packages still leave from the same site in the Cowichan Valley, engineered and cut in the same building, on equipment that keeps getting replaced as the technology improves.
Community involvement has always been fundamental to the Pacific Homes family of companies, its owners and its employees, including consistent support for youth sports programs and other local events and organisations. Pacific Homes is a valued employer, community member and business partner in the Cowichan Valley and beyond.
That has meant sponsoring therapeutic riding clubs and local hospital foundations, donating to local charities, and backing lacrosse, hockey and football teams, year after year. Although the business became international, the McKinnon family and the staff stayed grounded in the place the store opened.
It’s that family approach to business that allows our customers to feel comfortable to work with us.
Grant McKinnon, writing at the end of the 2014 building season
The corporate umbrella established in 2006 was Pacific Building Systems. Pacific Homes is dedicated to ethical business practices and enforces a zero-tolerance policy on modern slavery and human trafficking in its operations and supply chains, with regular monitoring, employee training and strict compliance. Read the Modern Slavery Act policy.
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