Construction magnate literally helped build Canada
The town of Stoughton isn’t exactly known for its skyscrapers. But thanks to a young carpenter who set up shop there more than a century ago, towering structures around the world can trace their lineage to the tiny community.
Ernie Poole left Prince Edward Island at 19, eventually settling in 1904 in Saskatchewan. Putting skills he learned as an apprentice to his millwright father to good use, he started his own construction company, graduating from farm houses and barns to town halls and schools.
The company expanded over the next decade, shifting headquarters from Stoughton to Rouleau to Moose Jaw. By the time Poole settled on Regina for his head office in 1914, he had named the firm Poole Construction Company Ltd. Today, it’s known simply as PCL Construction.
His first big project was the $300,000 Fort Qu’Appelle Sanitarium in 1918. The stock market crash of 1929, coupled with the drought of the Dirty Thirties, forced Poole to move his headquarters to Edmonton in search of bigger contracts.
The company grew rapidly through the ’40s and ’50s. More than 50 years after Poole’s death in 1964, it’s Canada’s largest contractor, with offices in 31 cities around the world and an annual construction volume of $8 billion. In 1977, the family sold the company to its employees, which now number more than 4,000.
The skylines of many Canadian cities are dominated by PCL projects — including the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Pearson Airport’s Terminal 1 in Toronto, the B.C. Place revitalization in Vancouver and the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. Cranes bearing the familiar PCL logo have risen over scores of major projects in this province, including the first two Hill Towers and First Nations University of Canada in Regina, several buildings at the University of Saskatchewan and the new Mosaic Stadium.