One fine hat

Top: Owner David Lanning stands next to a stack of hats
Above: Employee Neil Ford stands behind a blocking machine.
Neil started with the business in 1978, but started in the
shirt business in 1976, with the Kuntze family.

I’m a fan of hats, so when I’m in the TSC, aka Tractor Supply Store, in Belleville recently and spot a display of felt fedora hats I’m caught. Check it out in the mirror, I say: mmm… seems to work…nice headband…and look! A Made in Canada label: But hang on a minute! Does that also say Belleville in smaller font? Naaaghh? The person at the check-out is amused that one can be that enthusiastic about the possibility that his new hat is made right here! I tip the brim to her as I head out.

“My grandfather was in real estate in Toronto…he loaned a fellow in the hat business some money and took a chattel mortgage on the equipment as security”, David Lanning tells me as we descend the stairs of a tall brick building on Coleman Street in Belleville. “When the First World War broke out real estate went down the tubes, things went bad and grandfather found himself in something he never expected; the hat business! Hats were really popular then…servicing expensive hats,” David mentions. “My grandfather told the story where the chauffeurs for Bay Street executives would bring a hat over and get it cleaned and re-pressed in the morning to have it ready by lunch time.”

About this building, I ask? “Built by Deacon Brothers clothing manufacturers around 1903,” David replies. “My dad and my grandfather moved the hat business here from Toronto in 1949,” he says as we pause on a landing. “I went to school in town but by the ‘70s when Dad bought the Bell Shirt Company from the Kuntze family, I was living away.”

David tells me. “It was second nature that drew me back. I started out in the shirt business,” he adds. “Come on, I’ll show you the bodies in the basement.” Whoa! What was that? Bodies?? “Yep!” David smiles: “It’s a standing joke around here from the time we used to store ‘hat-bodies’ down below,” he laughs as we follow down the stairwell.

“We’ve gone from 100 employees to somewhere around 10 and bounced around in between: But we’ve always made the hats right here on the ground floor,” David recalls as he swings a heavy metal door that opens to a rink-size factory floor. Row upon row of now quiet equipment leads off in all directions: I rub my hand over the sheen of a cast-iron fridge-height apparatus. “We are one of three ‘blockers’ left in the country and these are blocking machines,” David points out. “We essentially don’t do any cutting and sewing…we’re not like a garment maker…we block hats,” he explains as he picks up a pizzasize sheet of woven straw from a stack. “We take a flat body of material…straw like this or felt and put it in one of these presses to block or press it into a form,” he illustrates. “This equipment is from the late 1800s and has been updated and modified over the years and while we have newer technology there’s nothing wrong with the vintage systems,” he offers as I follow him through corridors of machines.

“The light-weight presses my dad bought from Mexico back in the ‘50s, some of these older hydraulic presses are original from the Toronto operation. They are gas-fired. Like a gas oven, pilot lights come on at four o’clock in the morning because the mass of iron takes that long to heat up.” I keep my hands off. “They are very easily balanced…counterweighted at the back so that even though the die weighs 100 pounds we can balance it by adding a few more pounds and then its easy just to let it go and it closes,” David shows me by releasing a casino-like arm.

He then tells me how a number of years ago the Lanning family business was sold to a Montreal company in order to allow his father to retire. “I managed the factory here for the company and also worked in Montreal until after a decade had passed and the then owners, who were also a three-generation family business decided to sell this Belleville operation and asked me to find a buyer for the equipment, maybe in China,” David recounts. “It was a crossroads decision in my life: the possibility of my dad and grandfather’s enterprise disappearing. I took a deep breath and said I might be interested…everybody was a little surprised when I was able to buy it back in 2002.”

Linda Henry works on a hat. Linda was also originally a shirt company employee, who started in 1987.

We head toward a large sliding metal door when David stops at a row of shelves that hold what looks like an assortment of hats of steel. “These are molds for various hat models. There is a mold or a die as we call it for every size…most are made for both straws and felts…the male and female sections of the die come together in the press. We know the dies well enough that we don’t need the numbers… we go by names. I give the hat makers the work order with the style and customer name and they know what to grab and setup. I’m lucky to have the people I work with…we’ve been together for so long it’s also like family.”

What about trends, I ask? “The biggest wave we hit was John Travolta’s Urban Cowboy movie…that was fantastic,” David tells me. “Cowboy hats are important right now. A lot of country and western singers wear them and folks that go to jamborees.”

We enter another section of the plant and the place is alive with sounds of hissing and ker-chunking—the blocking machines in action. Workers at long tables are engaged with hand-finished details like…well, like my headband! I pick up on the lingo: Crowns and brim, a sweat band there and an outside trim: “We have a variety of sweat band treatments,” David says. “Sometimes elastic, sometimes cotton for a better fit, on some items we do a little side bow. We’re working on an order of cowboy hats right now,” he continues. “We do some felts for Calgary Stampede and some other felts this time of year, but it’s mostly straw,” he describes as we wander the floor.

Raffia or to-yo straw comes from the leaf of the palm trees of Madagascar, or also, more recently, from East Africa and is sent to China for finishing into ‘hat-bodies’. “When my dad began to import material he started in Hong Kong, and one of the men there moved back to China and started his own business,” David tells me. “I’m still working with that family…family to family business,” he continues as he hands me a woven straw body. “There is no machine that does this…its all hand woven,” he adds. “That is a sea grass body which is the least expensive straw…it’s grown along river beds and they cut it and weave it,” he points out.

“Over here is the Madagascar straw material we use for Tilley Endurables,” David informs. “We make their blocked hats and they supply some of the parts for finishing. With fine raffia the braid is hand sewn with a sewing machine…you can see how narrow the braids are…they weave the braid by hand which takes a couple of days. For the workers in China I imagine three days’ work goes into material for one hat. These are high-end bodies for a high-end customer. Tilley is only interested in Canadian- made finished goods so we maintain a very important relationship. We have 10 employees year-round thanks to our largest customers, which include TSC stores. We also sell thousands of one style of hat to the Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest event. All the while we build our stock, making fedoras in wool felt for our men’s stores. The rough output for a hat is about 7-10 days from when we press it to when it goes in the box; whereas the actual time spent can be as little as 15 minutes,” David concludes. “There can be risks, but still it’s a nice way of life owning your own business, he adds.”

The Moira River, swollen from heavy rains, slides past the back door of the Lanning building: leaning against a railing overlooking the river, I consider history near and beyond—like how I enjoy my vintage Deacon Brothers shirts and winter coat. Or how a nation was built on the fashion industry: the beaver pelt come currency that underwrote early European hat trends.

The rains have returned. I have a new hat, but not just any hat; this one comes with a narrative all of its own.