MONTREAL -- In 1973, Michel Lemyre started an amusement business in Laval, selling coin-operated pool tables to bars and restaurants.
Things were clicking along for about a decade when he hit a snag — he couldn’t find anyone to sell him aftermarket fabric for the tables for maintenance.
So he decided to make the tables himself. And thus Canada Billiard was born — billed as the last industrial manufacturer of pool tables in Canada — its factory is in another location but is still in Laval.
“I used to be good but I don’t play anymore,” he told CTV News. “I prefer to sell the tables now than playing on them.”
Lemyre, now 78, is stil president of the company and still goes to work every day.
“I’m not the sort of person to stop and play golf. I’m too young a fellow anyway to start playing golf,” he said.
The company has managed to succeed largely thanks to adaptations it has made to its offerings. It struck upon a hugely successful idea in 2007, when it started making its “condo line” — a line of pool tables that include a wooden top that can allow the table to be used as a conventional dinner table, and then converted to a pool table for leisure purposes.
“The idea behind that is if you have a dining room that you use only a few times a year, it would be better to have a pool table there and when you have people come over, you can make a dining room table out of it,” said the company’s vice president, Michel’s son Mike.
The company now finds itself in an interesting quandary thanks to the pandemic — demand for the game has exploded over the past two years. But because of a worldwide labour shortage, the company is struggling to hire people to keep up with the demand.
Nonetheless, it remains one of the few companies in North America that builds tables.
“Growing up was fun,” said Mike Lemyre. “Because we had pool tables, fuss ball, ping pong… it was fun.”
