Jack Little was born in a small house in Saskatoon, Sask. in May of 1931. The only thing he remembers of that time was freezing his tongue on the coal shovel.
Here is his story exactly as he told it to me.
In 1935 and at the height of the great depression, the family moved to Burnaby where his dad bought a house at a tax sale for $80.00.
Upon graduating from high school, Jack went to work for Finning Tractor. In 1954 he said that he made the best decision of his life and married Louise Montgomery, who was a psychiatric nurse at the Essondale Hospital. Together they raise three children - Deb Cripps, Bob Little and Ken Little.
In 1960 they moved to Nelson for work with Finning Tractor. Two years later, Jack formed Kootenay Industrial Supplies along with two other partners. As partnerships so often happen they agreed to disagree so they parted company in 1964 and the family of five moved to Prince George. They bought a house on Kelly Street and they are still living there today.
Jack said, I went to work for Central B.C. Realty for the next five years. I got in trouble with the income tax people and our financial situation went to an extreme low. If you try different things in life you have your ups and downs; we were definitely on the down side. In 1970 I was fortunate to be able to go back to work for Finning Tractor.
It was during this time that I had to replace ten fence posts in our backyard. The price at McInnis Building Supply was $2.00 per post which I could not afford. I remembered a small saw mill on Patterson Road cutting 4x4x8 cants so I bought ten of them for $1.00 each. This got the old head thinking. There were lots of houses being built as a result of the Pulp Mills coming to town. Somehow Louise was able to give me $50 to buy more posts. We placed an ad in the Prince George Citizen and soon sold our fifty posts so we bought 50 more - plus some gas. One post let to another and soon the customers wanted fence boards. The borrowed $50 was the beginning of Dollar Saver Lumber Ltd.
I didnt have a place to store lumber so I imposed on various friends for a little storage space. As a result of our frequent ads in the paper, the city licensing officer was after me to take out a business license. Eventually he became a customer and bought lumber from us and after awhile he just left us alone about the license.
Jack said, We rented property which had been an old mill site on Sintich Road. There were a few old camp houses on this property and a couple of them were rented out. One of the camp houses had been gutted by a fire and for some unknown reason the power had not been disconnected. I had received an order for a bunch of cut up short pieces of lumber but I had no way of cutting them. I needed to use a radial arm saw for this order but I had no power to run the saw. My buddy Ted came to visit and he looked at my problem. It was easy for him and with a pair of jumper cables and an extension cord he proceeded to cut my order with power borrowed from the burned out cabin. We foolishly left this saw hooked up and the next day the fire department came out for an inspection of the burned out building. They became quite upset when they saw the connection and they wanted hydro to press charges of theft against me. Fortunately a number of the hydro people were buying my lumber and squelched the theft charge.
About this time I left Finning Tractor to spend all my time on the lumber business. In 1974 and with the banks help I was able to purchase 8.20 acres of land next to Prince George Auto Wrecking. We had to move our small office over to the new property so with the help of two fork lifts we picked up our small office and put it on a truck. Right off the bat there were obstacles with overhead wires in our path. I climbed up on the roof and with the help of a stick I lifted the wires as we passed under them and moved our business to its present location. Being a small gyppo I did whatever was the simplest and cheapest way of getting something done.
There was a small reman mill on the property so we made kiln stick, lath and dunnage for the larger mills. Lumber sales were always good in the summer and mill sales were always good in the winter.
Jack said, Around this same time we purchased a small cabin on Cluculz Lake for $12,000 and $1,000 worth of lumber. We would go out to the cabin late on a Saturday night and I would have all day Sunday to enjoy the fact that our creditors couldnt reach us. The 1980s were a tough period with the recession plus the mill burned down twice.
In 1990 we sold part of the company to Greig Taylor and Ron Lind. Greig came to work for us which turned out to be a godsend. He took over as the manager and then in 2000 they purchased the rest of the company.
All of our family worked for the business at one time or another. Louise did everything from piling boards to sales and collecting money. Bob eventually took over the trucking, while Deb spent some time working in the yard and the mill.
Besides raising the children and helping in the business Louise started a kindergarten in the Baptist Church that was, at the time located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Kelly Street.
Jack reflected back and said, We have been among the lucky ones in life, with lots of problems, lots of fun and quite a bit of travelling. We were fortunate to be broke in the right city and at the right time.
