The Standard Pattern and Handle Company Opened, 1928
Renamed Allen Wood Products after a 1942 Fire
In 1928, George Allen moved to Fenelon Falls, just as the last log drives made their way down the Trent Waterway and he purchased the old Mickle & Dyment sawmill on the south shore of Cameron Lake (now the Fenelon Lakes Club). He founded the Standard Pattern and Handle Company, making handles for axes, picks, shovels and other tools, as well as patterns for industrial use. During the Second World War, he was shifting production to war items, such as rifle butts and wooden doorknobs (a stopgap measure to allow more brass to be used for shell casings). The company required 100 workers, making it the community’s largest employer.
In 1942, the factory burned, but George rebuilt it as Allen Wood Products. During the final years of the war, George began to manufacture a few wooden toys, and once peace returned in 1945, this part of the business expanded rapidly. In the 1930s, most kids grew up with precious few toys, but after the Second World War, families enjoyed unprecedented prosperity.
Allen Wood Products soon became one of Canada’s leading manufacturers of wooden toys. One of their most popular items was called a bingo bed (today they are sold as pounding benches)—which kids loved, as it often drove their parents crazy! George Allen showed a lot of imagination in dreaming up toys that could be made using the machinery on hand, including figures made from beads (functioning similarly to the plastic action figures that came later), abacuses, hanging crib toys, doll furniture, croquet and baseball bats.
Some of the patterns that Allen Wood Products produced were already marketed in other countries—in that era, multinational corporations were not as prevalent as they are today. For instance, the company produced “Allen’s Canadian Toy Builder,” which later became the Tinkertoy, after the company acquired the marketing rights from the American company A.G. Spalding.
By the 1970s, the toy industry was changing, with the advent of offshore manufacturing. The company did their best to keep going, but then one day the bank showed up to foreclose. “There was no warning or nothing,” recalls employee Don Young. At the time, Tinkertoy was still a healthy franchise, and it remained the village’s largest employer—in that era, many youths got their start at Allen Wood Products. The bank auctioned the factory in 1974, and the next year Ingvar and Maud Skoog reopened it as SwedFurn. They brought back several former employees to make wooden furniture for major retailers like Sears, Simpsons, Hudson’s Bay, Mobilia, Nordic Craft, Scandinavian Design, Eaton’s, Ikea and Idomo.
