ICBA celebrates 50 years of serving open shop construction this year, and we are looking back every week at some of the significant moments, milestones, and people who helped ICBA become Canada’s largest construction association.
Today, we wind the clock back and look at one of the key founding families of ICBA: The Rempels.
Ed and Ewald Rempel’s brother Clarence, a homebuilder in the Fraser Valley in the late 1960s, couldn’t get a reliable concrete supply. That led the three of them to set up Rempel Bros. Concrete, which became known for living up to its “service to the customer” motto.
Ewald and Ethel Rempel, ICBA life members
But as what started out as a one-truck operation grew, it also attracted unwelcome attention from the Teamsters Union, and from unknown individuals who objected to its determination to remain non-union. Rempel Bros. grew into the largest non-union concrete company in the province, and that made it a major target for certification. Ed and Ewald soon became regular features on the evening news, as their union opponents did whatever they could to intimidate and run them out of business.
“They felt that if they could unionize Rempel Bros., they could get every little housebuilder, every little contractor that was doing small jobs, because they’d have to be in the union in order to buy concrete,” remembered Ed’s wife, Myrtle-Anne Rempel.
That role as a lynchpin of open shop contracting – often the only supplier ready, willing and able to provide a vital material to a besieged job site – would play out many times. And it earned the company and its founders the sustained gratitude and admiration of many.
“They were far and above, in my opinion, the key to this whole thing,” said Ken Funk, another early-era ICBA member. “Had it been anyone else it wouldn’t have gone through. Ewald Rempel was the most stubborn son of a bitch you ever met in your life. And boy I’ll tell you, having a little bit of that quality myself, it’s a great strength.”
Ed Rempel, ICBA life member
It’s a quality Ewald, his wife Ethel, Ed and Myrtle-Anne, and everyone associated with the company would need to deal with both the aggressive certification efforts of the Teamsters and the business hurdles put in their path. Major unionized cement suppliers were successfully pressured not to sell to Rempel Bros., Myrtle-Anne says. Alternative suppliers were found in the U.S. and an arrangement was struck with a trucker – “kind of a renegade guy” – to get cement from there into B.C. She learned much later, however, that the trucker suffered multiple physical assaults for his role in helping supply their operations.
What Myrtle-Anne calls “scare tactics” also routinely spilled over into her home life. “At night, they would come up and down our driveway, flashing their lights. We would see the cars out there. Sometimes they’d get out of the cars and there’d be six big guys in our driveway, at our home,” she recalled.
On one occasion, her 16-year-old daughter was followed in her car from school and had to detour from the empty residence to a nearby Rempel Bros. plant before the trailing vehicle sped off. Such incidents led Myrtle-Anne’s mother to become too fearful to babysit her grandchildren and led some of her friends to fear for their own safety if they continued to socialize with her. “The tension was so electric in the air,” she said as she reflected back on the mid-1970s.
Ewald Rempel, who died in 1993, nevertheless had a measured assessment of the situation he faced, telling BC Business in 1985: “I recognize the good the unions have done. I’d be wrong if I said they’re not needed. But they have to be responsible because they have a lot of power. That responsibility, in a lot of them, is lacking – especially the Teamsters.” For her part, Myrtle-Anne summed it up in this way: “It was frightening, and yet we all felt we were doing the right thing.”
Ed and Myrtle-Anne, and Ewald and Ethel, were all granted ICBA Life Membership for their commitment to the Association and open shop construction. Myrtle-Anne, an award-winning, world-renowned artist, even did a painting of ICBA’s history and founders, and it hangs with pride in ICBA’s meeting room. While Ed, Ewald and Ethel have all passed away, Myrtle-Anne is a fixture at ICBA events to this day.
The Rempel Bros. story is intertwined with ICBA’s – watch for more in future ICBA50 features.
Myrtle-Anne Rempel, ICBA life member
