Bob Pritchard

1915 - Yes, date unknown

• Name	Bob Pritchard
  Born	CA 1915	, Pennsylvania, USA
  Gender	Male
  Business	1946
  	Keith-Day Knitwear Ltd.
  Business	1961	Port Carling, Muskoka, Ontario
  	Sherwood Inn
  Military	WW2 - Royal Canadian Air Force
  Eby ID Number	Waterloo-112583
  Died	Yes, date unknown
  Person ID	I112583	Generations
  Last Modified	6 Apr 2024

  
  

• Notes

  Flash from the past: Tony Day Sweaters was on Regina Street in Waterloo In 1946 a Kitchener couple, Bob and Mary Pritchard, began making sweaters in a garage near their home in the City View Apartments on Church Street. They had a single knitting machine Bob had purchased while serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. Last week's "mystery" photo was snapped 10 years later. By then the business they launched had a staff of 136 and was housed in a plant at 210 Regina St. N., Waterloo. Officially, it was Keith-Day Knitwear Ltd., but the firm was better known by the name of its product, Tony Day Sweaters. "The new Tony Day factory has 17 of the most versatile knitting machines available, producing 6,000 sweaters weekly which find their way into 1,500 stores across Canada, the United States and other countries," a 1956 company profile in The Record said. Clare Johnson was office manager at Keith-Day for 13 years, starting in 1955, a year after Bob Pritchard sold the firm to Richard Wurtele. The company had a great name and we had a fantastic product," said Johnson, who credits Pritchard for developing the machine-washable yarn (combining wool and Orlon) used to make the colourful Tony Day sweaters. Pritchard was a Pennsylvanian who moved to Galt (Cambridge) in the early 1940s to work in a textile mill. Keith, Tony and Day were the names of some of his relatives. Susan Giesler of Kitchener wrote to say her mother worked for Keith-Day, starting in the early 1950s when the firm was upstairs at 75 Queen St. S., in the old Kitchener auditorium, later demolished so Charles Street could be extended south to Benton Street. "As the only girl there, she was treated very kindly by Mr. Pritchard . . . consequently, he became my godfather," Giesler said. Robert Bruce of Waterloo has fond memories of being shown around the Regina Street plant by his dad, also named Robert, who was the personnel manager. "I recall the shop floor was an absolute hive of activity, with the staff, largely female, busy as bees. Everywhere you looked there were sewing machines, knitting machines and spools of yard just a-spinning. The shipping room was also humming, where pullovers and Perry Como-style cardigans were packaged for delivery to stores." Greg Koehn wrote to say he was a part-time knitter at Keith-Day in the 1960s, while he was still a Waterloo Collegiate Institute student. "You had to make sure the knitting machines did not run out of yarn. Some machines would hold between 30 and 40 spools. If a machine ran out, it would shut off, stalling production . . . Bad thing!" Koehn also made deliveries. "I would deliver yarn to some rural areas as far away as New Hamburg, to ladies who would knit various items at their home and then I would pick up their products." Susan Wunder of Kitchener recalls that her mom, Elisabeth Doerner, a Keith-Day employee, worked at home while on maternity leave in 1953, repairing slight imperfections in sweaters so they could still be sold. "I remember the cartons of sweaters coming to the house, all of them bright colours." In the 1960s Keith-Day moved its office staff to a neighbouring building at 230 Regina St. N. Judy Johnston spent three summers at Terry Day in the mid-1960s, cutting out sweater fronts, backs and sleeves. She was then a fashion design student at Ryerson in Toronto. "Who knew that sweaters were cut out? Up until then, I thought that they were knitted and then sewn together . . . I remember that the ladies in the cutting department arrived half an hour before the sewers to get the production underway. We worked nine hours a day, for 90 cents an hour." Rita Voll of St. Clements was a Keith-Day staffer in the late 1960s. "My job was scheduling clerk, which involved taking the number of pounds of yarn received and determining how many sweaters could be made . . . This was all done by hand as we had no calculators at all." At its peak, Keith-Day employed about 300, but it ultimately found it couldn't compete with low-priced imported sweaters. Peter Wurtele was general manager in 1970 when his father, the late Richard Wurtele, made the decision to halt operations. Without government protection for the textile industry, the firm "just didn't have a chance to make any money," he said. The plant at 210 Regina St. N. later became home to the Beresford Box Corp. and 230 Regina St. N. became the Dutch Boy Food Markets head office. Bob Pritchard was involved in other local business ventures after selling the firm. From 1961 to 1972 he was owner/manager of the Sherwood Inn near Port Carling. Thanks for everyone who wrote or phone this week! Note: Two Tony Day sweaters are displayed in the exhibit Nuclear Fashion: Selling Style to Suburbia 1946 - 1964, which continues to Friday, Sept. 2 in the City of Waterloo Museum at Conestoga Mall. Flash from the past: Tony Day Sweaters was on Regina Street in Waterloo | TheRecord.com. (2011). TheRecord.com. Retrieved 5 November 2017, from https://www.therecord.com/living-story/2588906-flash-from-the-past-tony-day-sweaters-was-on-regina-street-in-waterloo/

  
  

• Event Map

  Born - CA 1915 - , Pennsylvania, USA Business - Sherwood Inn - 1961 - Port Carling, Muskoka, Ontario  = Link to Google Earth