At the turn of the 19th century, brick-making was a decentralized industry. Wherever communities were growing, some enterprising local would see the need for both sawn lumber and bricks with which to build houses, churches and businesses. There was no large industrial scale plant from which a builder could peruse, select and order brick to be delivered on site from a great distance, nor the sales process to make that happen. In those days, the plants which supplied building materials for small town and large city growth were often right in the municipalities, townships and counties they served.
In 1900, three enterprising brothers named Alexander, Duncan and William Merkley commenced milling and brickyard operations in Casselman, Ontario supplying sawn lumber from Ottawa valley forests, bricks from local clay and the ancillary building materials needed for regional construction – nails, mortar, tar and tools – one of many similar operations throughout rural Ontario and Western Quebec.
In 1912, Alexander was hired away from the Merkley company by a much larger brick operation in Ottawa to oversee a reorganization and renovation of the brickyard owned by Mr. Ballantyne near the independent village of Billings Bridge. The brickyard stood on the banks of the Rideau River, where today stands the playing fields of “The RA”, the expansive recreation centre operated by the Recreation Association of the Public Service of Canada. Ballantyne was looking to expand and modernize his operation to take advantage of the strong growth of Ottawa as the federal government grew in scale and people flocked to the new national capital.
However, with nearly every able-bodied man joining the Canadian Army to fight for Empire, God and Country in the First World War and all industry focussed on the war effort, there was no demand for bricks or the labour force to continue operations, and Ballantyne closed the brickyard in 1915.
Following Armistice, Duncan and William joined with Alexander to buy out Ballantyne and take over the brickyard, renaming the enterprise Merkley’s Limited. They established offices in the Fraser building at 53 Queen St. and built up the plant at Billings Bridge, selling brick, interlocking tile, and hollow building tile in standard and custom shapes. Their advertisements in the local broadsheet newspapers of the day touted the call to action: “For Beauty with Economy, Build with Brick”, a bit of marketing that mirrors their marketing position to this day.
The brothers immediately received contracts to supply residential and institutional brick in the city, including the terra cotta floors, walls and partitions for the new Glebe Collegiate Institute completed by 1922. By 1923 they had their largest contract yet – the exterior brick supply for the new Ottawa Auditorium, which was touted to be a “Mecca for Sport, Social and Convention Activities”. The massive (by standards of the day) structure on O’Connor Street would host hockey games, sporting events, auto shows, circuses, music concerts (including Elvis Presley) and theatrical shows for the next half century, making it the premier social venue in Ottawa until it was replaced by the YMCA facility we have today.
By 1924, they received the contract to supply the backing interlocking terra cotta tile for the new Ottawa Civic Hospital and Nurses Residence, which started a long history of Merkley collaboration and support of this now world-class institution.
Rideau Red, the colour of Old Ottawa
As neighbourhoods like Centretown, the Glebe, Sandy Hill, Hintonburg, and Ottawa South were developed and filled in, “Rideau Red” wire-cut and stock-moulded clay brick from Merkley’s began to paint our town in that distinctive architectural vernacular we appreciate so much today – the soft red brick homes, townhomes and institutions of the early twentieth century. Homes made from Merkley brick in Ottawa’s core neighbourhoods still fetch high prices.
The company would eventually change its name to Ottawa Brick and Terra Cotta Company in an effort to connect their brand to their product line. For the next three decades Merkley brick products would be synonymous with Ottawa, reaching everywhere in the city and helping to define its identity. From 1938 to 1940, the company supplied the terra cotta backing brick and even granite face of Canada’s Supreme Court Building, the face of Canada’s justice system.
The Ottawa Brick and Terra Cotta factory at Billings Bridge prospered through the first half of the 20th century and employed many of the men who lived in Billings Bridge up the hill on the Metcalfe Road (now Bank Street). These men and their families depended on the work at the factory – tending the massive kilns, digging and mixing clay ingredients, building pallets and making deliveries.
In 1958, the National Capital Commission began to lay claim to lands along the Rideau River and Canal and forced the sale of the land beneath the Ottawa Brick and Terra Cotta Company. Demand for terra cotta backing brick for partition walls was down with the advent of plaster board and sales had diminished. By the middle of the century, larger brick manufacturing companies with more efficient factories, marketing plans and distribution networks were replacing smaller local brickworks. It was decided that once the land was sold, the factory would not relocate, but close forever. Alexander Merkley’s son Douglas Cameron Merkley, who had been brought up to take over the family business, had a plan to turn the closure into a business opportunity, one that would signal a new era in the entrepreneurial Merkley family’s story.
In 1959, Cameron Merkley created Merkley Supply Ltd., a company that would fit itself neatly into the distribution networks of these large-scale masonry factories across the country and around the world. Leveraging 60 years of experience making the kiln-dried clay products that built Ottawa, Cameron and his growing staff soon became Ottawa’s premier distributor of masonry and stone products in the region and following the model of their original business in Casselman, they also supplied all the tools, accoutrements, adhesives, mortar and cement products that the region’s masons and bricklayers would need to do their jobs.
Cameron Merkley knew that, in order to serve the entire city, the company needed a central location and so leased a property at 31 Rochester Street near the edge of Lebreton Flats, then Ottawa’s central industrial district. From here the company served the booming postwar expansion of the city’s new neighbourhoods in Ottawa, Nepean and Gloucester, supplying the needs of developers and builders such as Campeau, Fuller, Minto, Doran and Urbandale. They grew the business and served the city from the Rochester yard until 1978 when the operation moved to occupy the former steel fabrication shops of M. Zagerman and Co. at 100 Bayview Road, where they have been ever since.
A third generation and renewed energy
Cameron retired in 1982 and handed over control of the company to his family, establishing his son Robert as its new president, and the Merkley family business entered a new era of communication, technology, marketing, relationship-building and community support.
In the first eight decades of the 20th century relationships with market stakeholders relied on handshakes, loyalty and a local market not threatened by outside competition. Clients were now marketed to by the distribution networks of a much wider region or directly from the manufacturers themselves. Loyalties were threatened by this outside marketing as well as new local competitors. Robert Merkley, a gregarious and loyal man himself, understood that, in order to hold on to those relationships and build back that loyalty, he needed to communicate, to reach not only the builders but the designers, architects and even homeowners themselves.
It was now a far different business landscape than that of his grandfather Alexander’s or father Cameron’s. In this new world, it had become necessary to strengthen bonds through communication, to search out new technologies that benefit customers and to demonstrate the creative potential of the humble brick. In 1900, when the Merkley story began, you could build a home or a business from wood or brick and stone. Today, customers have so much more choice that a new paradigm was necessary for the modest brick peddler.
Shortly after taking over the reins of the business, Robert created the MSL Trade Show, a one-day trade show and social event that, for 33 years, has invited members of the Ottawa design and construction industries to explore new product lines and emerging technologies. More importantly, they come together to share stories, rekindle dormant friendships and start new relationships over lunch. From bricklayers to architects and designers to the CEOs of Ottawa’s largest development companies, men and women of the industry have strengthened the local construction network year over year.
The MSL Show has, over the past decade, been transformed into an educational event with numerous technology seminars and product presentations of such a caliber they are recognized by such self-regulating organizations as the Ontario Association of Architects as fulfilling members’ requirements for continuing education.
Robert spent 27 years as a member of the board of directors of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders Association, three of those as president. He was a driving force behind its much-valued design awards program, communications and publicity outreach, and membership growth. He served eight years on the board of the Ottawa Construction Association, one as chairman.
More than bricks
A warm and gifted communicator and tireless relationship builder, Robert Merkley understood that he was part of something much bigger than the business community he had nurtured so attentively over decades. He understood that rising water lifts all boats; that if his community was strong and vibrant, then people would want to do business here and live here and this growth meant a stronger business landscape. He loved this city and wanted to give back to it in a way that made it even better.
When the Ottawa Hospital reached out to Ottawa’s business sector to help them in their ambitious Legacy Campaign fundraising initiative in the early 2000s, he led his colleagues from the construction industry network to help boost that campaign well past its $100-million goal. Tireless in business, he was relentless in fundraising, unabashedly willing to pick up the phone and start calling, cajoling, and pressing his contacts to help build a better city.
Teaming up with fellow businessmen Roger Greenberg, Dwight Brown and others, Robert helped to raise $7 million to build a Centre for Construction Trades and Building Sciences at Algonquin College. By raising that amount, the group was able to flip a switch to activate an additional $62 million from the Government of Ontario.
In the 2000s, Robert started to focus his community support efforts on building a world-class healthcare system in Ottawa, one that not only paid dividends to the citizens of Ottawa but which attracts the very best medical, surgical and research experts from around the world.
Merkley once said: “Governments provide enough for our hospitals to deliver good service, but the community has to come to the table to help hospitals deliver excellent service”. A man who puts real action behind his words, Robert gathered funding and material support to build Roger’s House, a palliative care facility for children. He also led a fundraising campaign for The Hospice at Maycourt and sat on their board of directors for many years.
In 2010, Robert joined Roger Greenberg and Claude Desrosiers of Boone Plumbing to create an annual fund-raising cycling event for medical research at the Ottawa Hospital. The peloton of the fundraising for this team-building charity event was led from start to finish by Robert Merkley for the entire 10 years of its existence. Over those 10 years, riders in the event raised an extraordinary $14 million, with the Merkley Supply Brick Peddlers cycling team raising an amazing $1.5 million of that total.
Merkley Supply continues to support initiatives of the Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and the Royal Ottawa Hospital Foundation as well as programs that help individuals and families in financial stress such as Christie Lake Kids, Habitat for Humanity and the Ottawa Food Bank.
As we embark on the building of the new state-of-the-art Ottawa Hospital campus at Dow’s Lake, the biggest healthcare infrastructure project in Ottawa’s history, Merkley Supply Ltd. will supply products that will benefit our community for generations to come. But it’s more than brick and stone to Robert Merkley, who recognizes that the new healthcare facility will support the health and well-being of our children and grandchildren well into the next century. Merkley Supply has now pledged a million dollars more to help the Ottawa Hospital become the finest facility of its kind in Canada and to attract the best physicians, nurses and healthcare professionals from around the world.
Building a future
In 1900, the centuries-old traditions and technology of brick-making and lumber milling had changed very little since the arrival of European settlers. When they bought the sawmill and brick kilns in Casselman, the Merkley brothers had no cause to see the landslide of immigration-fuelled growth, social change and technology to come. They likely counted on a simple life, milling lumber, firing brick and raising their families. But in true entrepreneurial spirit, they embraced oncoming change and built a business that helped build this city in so many ways – both physically and socially. Their experience proved that the one thing that could be counted on in business was change. It was either adapt or begin to decline.
Merkley Supply Ltd. Photo: Doublespace
Today, Merkley Supply Ltd. embraces a world of changing technology. The company, under the guidance of Robert Merkley and the unmatched experience and talent of the Merkley team, continues to nurture relationships, navigate the fluctuations of a global economy, and find meaningful ways to serve the local community. The Merkley leadership team actively seeks to identify emerging trends in design and construction and to meet these new directions with innovative products, design knowledge and application support. A century ago, the Merkley brothers were happy just to supply a simple demand for building materials. Today, MSL aims to do more to influence and guide Ottawa’s designers and architects by showcasing the very best creative ideas for interiors, exteriors and landscaping from global suppliers and bringing to the Ottawa market the latest in carbon-friendly and design-forward products.
For more than a century, Merkley Supply Ltd. and its founding enterprises have helped to build this community in lasting ways – from beautiful buildings and homes to world-class healthcare institutions – that have made Ottawa and region one of the best places to live in Canada. This legacy brings much pride to Merkley Supply’s staff while the possibilities for the future continue to drive their passion and creativity.
This article first appeared in the September 2024 special “City Building” issue of the Ottawa Business Journal. That publication is available in its digital edition below
