Local legacy of businessman Harold Kenyon
EDITOR’S NOTE: In recognition of Canada’s 150th birthday The Herald is running local historical stories. For the next several weeks we are publishing stories from our archives on prominent builders in our community. The following story appeared on Feb. 7, 2007 in The Herald as part of a series on local builders.
From institutional to residential to industrial and commercial it’s hard to find a major construction project locally which hasn’t had a Kenyon family component attached to it.
Harold Kenyon came to Penticton in 1919 and shortly afterwards hooked up with a construction firm and eventually became a partner in the firm Matson, Kenyon and Robertson.
Since then members of the Kenyon family, which currently builds under the name Greyback Construction Ltd., has set an almost unmatched industry standard for excellence in workmanship and affordability not just locally but throughout the province.
Now run by brothers Doug and Larry Kenyon, the business has since grown to more than 200 employees, working on as many as 20 or more projects at any given time.
“My grandfather was a really neat guy,” said Doug. “He was the superintendent who built the United Church and he was quite a carpenter in his day, then started his own company in ’37.
“They built the first arena (Memorial) and a lot of other buildings, including the original Peach Bowl and city hall.”
According to Gordon, who took over the business with his brother Al during the early 1950s, Harold Kenyon never had trouble finding work in the community. And that continued after he left Matson, Kenyon and Robertson to start his own company.
“I think he decided to go out on his own because he’d had enough of the partners,” said Al, who picked up many of the skills he used in his own years running the company from his father. “He started out with little jobs and then gradually grew from there.
“He was well-known as a good carpenter and he had lots of experience so he could get work quite easily.
“The industry has certainly changed a lot but the qualifications are the same, if you’re known to do good work, then you can get repeat business.” His brother agreed: “My dad always used to say you have to do a good job first and you have to make it pay after that. That was something that I always remembered,” said Gordon with a laugh. “That was the way we always ran the business afterwards, and I think it worked.
“Let’s see, we built the Lakeside Resort and we built the city hall, built a little office across the street, the Bank of Commerce and the Royal Bank and the library and museum, and the convention centre and the arena, just to name a few.
“And that was just in Penticton — a lot of our other work was out of town.”
Gordon was 10 when his father started the business and seven years later when he got out of high school, going to work for his father just seemed the logical thing to do.
“It was something I always wanted to do,” he recalled. “I wasn’t very good in school, but I was fairly good with my hands. I had a kind of a natural ability with that sort of thing.
“I was always building something in my dad’s basement; I was always creating something or other.”
That was at the end of the Second World War and he was needed in the family business so he decided to skip college or university and instead went to work in the millwork cabinet shop as an apprentice.
“They did ladders, windows and doors — just about anything — and then I carried on working outside and learned that business,” said Gordon.
“Then I was superintendent and then general superintendent, and I looked after all the outside construction equipment. My brother Al looked after everything inside, all the money matters, contracts and all that.” After taking over the company during the early ’50s they began to do more and more bridge construction throughout the province.
In fact the Kenyons became well-known for their bridge construction, which at the time was even more labourintensive than it is now.
“We built an awful lot of bridges on the Trans Canada Highway in B.C. and even one or two in Alberta,” said Gordon.
Those capabilities are still in evidence today and not long ago Greyback was chosen on one of the major contractors for the $144-million William R. Bennett Bridge across Okanagan Lake to Kelowna.
And with the advent of new equipment and procedures, some things about the construction business are easier than they used to be. Gordon feels the real quality of a job is measured by the individual who is on-site doing the work with his or her hands.
“Certainly there are different methods; in some ways it’s quite a bit easier now than it was. For example, they have ready-mix (cement) but we used to mix our own, screen our own gravel and haul it to the job site and mix it ourselves and put it into the forms, where today they have readymix and a pumper,” said Gordon.
“But when you get right down to it the manpower is the same, forming up and framing. We had some employees that worked for us for a long, long time and that makes a very big difference.”
He still enjoys and gets a real sense of pride looking around the community and seeing the work the family business has done.
It was in the early 1970s after suffering a heart attack he began slowing down and gradually passed along more and more responsibilities to his nephews.
Gordon still loves working with his hands and has a complete woodworking shop set up in the basement of his Carmi Place home.
“I do a lot of restoration work for the Sicamous Society these days,” he said. “It’s not something that I have to do but something that I really enjoy.”
As well as his work in the construction industry, Al Kenyon also spent some time in the political arena and served as mayor of the City of Penticton for a single term from 1976-1979.
It was during a time of huge expansion of the city’s population which in 1975 and 1976 increased almost 15 percent, compared to the average annual growth rate of two or three percent.
At the time when he left the mayor’s position, the $4.5 million project to construct the four-lane Channel Parkway had already begun.
It was in 1983 that Doug and Larry Kenyon decided to revamp the business to a certain degree, going to an open shop (non-union) format and changing the name to Greyback.
The idea for the new name came from a friend and is actually the name of a mountain in the watershed area just to the east of Penticton.
One thing the brothers didn’t change was the commitment to top quality workmanship and fair pricing that their father and uncle and grandfather had established.
“I think because it is a family business you have more at stake with your reputation and your credibility,” said Doug. “We’re not going to be the biggest guys in B.C., but hopefully we’ll do some of the best work around.
“It’s an exciting business, you’re bidding which is kind of like gambling, you feel some sense of pride in completing projects on schedule and within budget.”
He also has no delusions about where the reputation for quality comes from.
“Our people in the field are second to none — that’s the truth,” said Doug. “Our superintendents can build anything. It’s the quality. At the end of the day we work for the owners. There are no surprises and they’re going to get some quality at a good price.”
As well as the bridge in Kelowna one of the other major projects Greyback is working on is the 160 Lakeshore towers high-rise residential development.
A very good example of the quality residential work the company has done is the recently completed Lakeview Terraces on Vancouver Avenue.
A project that, in spite of its size, fits nicely in the surrounding landscape but provides its residents with the optimum in views, luxury and workmanship.
Greyback Construction is also a licensed residential builder and has home warranty programs available to provide additional protection for buyers.
Other residences the company has contributed to include Cedar Gardens, Cedar Village, The Villas, Apex Lofts, Esling Park, Fairway Village, Kiwanis Housing, La Vista Ridge, Atkinson Gardens, The Concorde, Hawthorn Park and Royal Private Residence Club.
“In our market we have to be able to do different things, if we were in Vancouver it would be a different story, we could specialize but in our market we have to be able to do anything from residential to concrete to steel to bridges to whatever,” said Doug. “But what we’re doing right now is what we like to do and will continue to do.
“We’re very lucky and we have great people. It is a very flat organization in terms of structure. This way it encourages people to take responsibility for their projects and it doesn’t get so bureaucratic.”
And now, with Larry’s son Matt joining the company recently, a fourth generation of Kenyon is now poised to carry on the family tradition.