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The 1851 Upper Canada census lists four piano companies in Toronto. The first Canadian builder was likely Frederick Hund in Québec City in 1816, and by mid-century, piano makers were popping up from Halifax to Toronto. Because of the distance and difficulty moving heavy pianos across the ocean, local manufacturers began to spring up quickly. Those Webers can be identified with the inscription “made for Heintzman” beside the Weber logo.Ĭanada’s piano making story begins before Confederation. “Heintzman in Toronto sold Weber pianos, which were actually made in Kingston,” he says. “It gets confusing because factories would make pianos with their own name, (and also) with a dealers’ name.” John Hall is a piano technician, piano collector, and the owner and curator of the Canadian Piano Museum in Napanee, Ontario.
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to Whaley-Royce, Toronto has been home to 48 different piano companies, including several factories. During the golden era of Toronto piano makers, roughly from 1900 to 1920, Toronto made instruments rivalled Europe’s legendary companies.įrom the Daniel Bell Organ Co. There was an abundance of wood, and with one of the continent’s largest steel foundries located in Hamilton, the pieces were in place. There were some early imports from the United States or Europe, but Canada was vast, and what’s more, had a wealth of raw materials. That was home entertainment,” says Thomas Lawrie, a piano technician based in Grimsby, Ontario. “In that day and age, people might have had a Victrola. “In the early 1900s, there were 300-plus brands of Canadian pianos,” says James Musselwhite, a third generation piano technician with Paul Hahn & Co. There was a time when many, perhaps even most, Canadian homes contained a piano. It’s a past that is long gone, but perhaps not entirely forgotten. Heintzman, a part of Toronto’s history, and arguably the crown jewel of Canada’s storied piano making past. The piano was later auctioned off for $3.22 million, a record-setting price for a piano. If you have a large screen TV, or saw other close-up footage, you might have noticed a detail that should have caught any Toronto music lover’s eye - the brand name of the piano was Heintzman. If you were watching the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, you might have taken in Lang Lang performing on a stunning nine-foot grand piano made of sparkling crystal. Heintzman, Mason & Risch, Mendelssohn Piano Co., Newcombe Piano Co., Nordheimer, and Gourlay, Winter & Leeming, all major piano manufacturers based in Toronto.