Ken McKinnon, the man who started it all
Born in New Westminster in 1925. A tail gunner on a Lancaster bomber before he was twenty. Founder of Pacific Builders' Supplies in 1959, of the first roof truss plant on Vancouver Island in 1969, and of the company that became Pacific Homes. He died on June 10, 2017, aged 92.
A life in dates
- 1925
- Born May 12 in New Westminster, British Columbia, the second youngest of thirteen children, raised on a dairy farm outside Vancouver
- 1942
- Joins the Royal Canadian Air Force the day after he turns seventeen and a half. Commissioned as an officer and sent to England as a tail gunner on a Lancaster bomber
- 1949
- Marries Marie Dietrick. Six children follow: Phyllis, Ann, David, Wayne, Barb and Grant
- 1959
- Founds Pacific Builders' Supplies in Cobble Hill with five local partners, buying them out by 1964
- 1969
- Starts the first roof truss plant on Vancouver Island, the business that became Pacific Truss
- 1994
- Formally retired, having handed the company to his sons David, Wayne and Grant
- 2012
- Lifetime Achievement Award from the Cowichan Chamber of Commerce
- 2017
- Dies on June 10, aged 92
A tail gunner at nineteen, and then a little of everything
The Air Force was short of aircrews in 1942 and allowed enlistment at seventeen and a half with a parent's permission. Ken trained in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, received his officer's commission, and flew missions over Germany with a crew drawn from Canada, England and Australia. By the time the war in Europe ended, that crew had outlasted every other crew they had started with six months earlier.
He was discharged in September 1945 and, as his sons put it at his funeral, ended up trying a bit of everything. Farming in partnership with his brother Allen until 1949. Logging around Mission until 1953. The Port Alberni dairy industry with his brothers Don and Les until 1956. Selling cars in Duncan. Working on the expansion of the Crofton pulp mill.
In the middle of all that moving about he met an Albertan named Marie in 1949 and married her that autumn. They moved to Vancouver Island in 1953, and the Cowichan Valley became the family's home for good.
A supply store with eighteen potential customers
In 1959 Ken and five other men opened Pacific Builders' Supplies in Cobble Hill. The family joke was that he was very optimistic starting a business in a village with only eighteen other potential customers, and in the early days whole days went by without one.
It grew steadily. He opened the gate before anyone arrived in the morning and was the last to leave at night, and by 1964 he had bought out his five partners. The store's first delivery truck, a 1952 Chev that had come into the business as a partner's equity, is now on permanent display at the Cowichan Forest Discovery Museum. Its story is on the Our Story page.
He was building local houses too, and in 1969 he saw the opportunity that became his true love in business: the first roof truss plant on Vancouver Island. Contractors took some educating before they accepted a manufactured truss over the hand framed kind. Once they did, the operation expanded to Surrey, Langley and Cranbrook, and the name Pacific Truss became synonymous with a quality product. He sat on the Lumber Standards Committee and the Canadian Wood Council, and was instrumental in forming the first truss association in Western Canada.
The move into full house packages came in the early eighties, in the teeth of a recession that closed many businesses. The company came out of it leaner and stronger, and that division, Pacific Homes, went on to become the largest part of the group.
Ken began stepping back in 1990 and was formally retired by 1994, with the company in the hands of his sons David, Wayne and Grant. What had begun as a one man outfit at one point employed more than 500 people.
Retirement did not mean the end of activity
In 1996 he started volunteering at Providence Farm, a property owned by the Sisters of Saint Ann that runs community programs. His project was to get the old fields productive again, much of it funded from his own pocket, and the farm later named one of its buildings after him.
He and Marie were longtime members of the Knights of Columbus and the Catholic Women's League, and in thirty years of marriage made twenty-five trips out of the country, to India, Africa and Peru among them. Marie died in 2003, after almost 54 years together. On a visit to Australia's Gold Coast he looked up an old family friend, Sandra, and the family gained a new member.
At 79 he planted a vineyard on an empty lot below his house. Asked how long a vineyard takes to come to fruition, he answered seven years, and never seemed to doubt he would see it. In his last year he tore out most of the vines and hand planted a thousand lavender plants.
In 2012 the Cowichan Chamber of Commerce gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award for what they called his community building mentality. His own explanation was simpler.
The best thing you can do for your community is to provide interesting, well-paying jobs for the people that live there.
Ken McKinnon, on receiving the Cowichan Chamber of Commerce Lifetime Achievement Award, 2012
Remembered as having made a difference
By the age of 20 he had had more harrowing, life changing experiences than most of us ever have our entire life, but he will tell you to this day that those were the most exciting years of his life.
Grant McKinnon, writing in 2015 as his father turned 90
Dad hoped he would be remembered as having made a difference. When I think of the impact he made on the truss industry, his family and this community, I think we can all agree he has made a huge difference in the lives of many.
Wayne and Grant McKinnon, from the eulogy, June 2017
The company still works the way he ran the store. His sons wrote that as big as Pacific has grown, he taught them to remain grounded, and to be proud of being called a family business. Packages still leave from the same site in Cobble Hill.
The company he started
Come and see what he built.
The plant Ken started is open to visitors. Design department, production floor, truss plant and selections showroom, on the same site.