When Chris McPherson is not busy providing and overseeing the development and maintenance of the Queen’s Botanic Garden, he is in his shop, Firestorm Woodwork, making all sorts of wood products. It’s a side business that he started in 1991 after being laid off from a construction job.
The business has grown steadily since then, adding more and more to its stock. While it used to just make items like tables and shelving, it now also produces custom and one-of-a-kind pieces, like that Dutch Scuppers gin store.
“A lot of the more than just the traditional stationary pieces that we had been making,” said McPherson. “People started asking us for all these different types of one-offs, which is how we got into making all these different types of things.”
Those things are now being produced in the plant-filled shop in Cobourg’s North Centre Industrial Park. It’s a large space with lots of windows and natural light to fill, which is essential for a shop that makes so many naturally and environmentally-friendly products.
“It’s just a perfect fit for us. It’s everything that we love about nature and that’s the way that it should be made and that’s the way it should be sold,” said McPherson.
McPherson said that the shop’s wood comes from sustainable sources including Ontario and the United States, and is mostly red and white oak. It’s then turned into products like turnings, crown moulding and brackets. The current stock includes solid and hollow heart pine stairs, as well as custom upholstery and cabinets for restaurants.
While the shop makes so many products, it does still specialize in a few: It makes its signature mahogany and walnut ready-to-drink dispensers, and produces custom replicas of antique pewter beer kettles, some of which were made for the Royal Ontario Museum in the ‘60s.
“When you’re looking for something that’s a one-off product, it’s hard to find somebody that makes it. There aren’t that many people doing it,” said McPherson.
But it’s also hard to come by a shop that is sustainable
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