When Brian Suckling began his career as a travelling shoe salesman in the early 1950s, tens of thousands of people worked in shoe factories across Ontario and Quebec. Today that number, totaling a few hundred, has lost one more as Brian died this month at age 83. What makes Brian’s story unique is that he worked virtually to the end, retiring less than a year ago, and after an astounding 60 year career. With him goes an intimate, and perhaps unparalleled, knowledge of Canada’s once proud shoemaking heritage.
Brian could rhyme off the long list of shuttered shoe factories, but for him only two mattered; HH Brown’s factory in Quebec, where he began his meteoric ride in the shoe business, and Mellow Walk Footwear, where his career ended decades later. Brian loved to share stories about HH Brown and anyone who knew him would be able to recite verbatim in Brian’s trademark, affectionately imitated, voice: “When I started at HH Brown we were only making a few hundred pairs a day, but by the time I left we were making well over 8,000.”
Like many a shoe-dog, a term reserved for travelling shoe salesmen, Brian travelled the country visiting the many independent shoe stores of the day. What happened to Brian eventually happens to all travelling salesmen. One day he woke up and found that his services were no longer required. Some salesmen never regain their footing, but for Brian there would be a second act and though he didn’t know it yet it would be bigger than the first.
He was 71 when he walked through the doors at Mellow Walk’s Toronto factory. Mellow Walk’s owners had heard the stories about what Brian had accomplished in his heyday years earlier at HH Brown and they decided to see if lightning could strike twice. Little thought was given to Brian’s advanced age; Mellow Walk was interested in his experience and his lifetime of relationships.
What Brian did with that opportunity is the stuff of legends. In baseball terms, he took a battered team and helped it win the pennant. He told Mellow Walk that it should be making safety shoes, taught the company how to make them, how to seek certification approval, and to whom to sell them to. He took one of the last shoe factories in Canada and not only made it relevant, but made it thrive. Brian single-handedly helped land key accounts selling to safety industry leaders: Marks, Mister Safety Shoes, Work Authority, Collins Safety and Belmont.
In his later years, he rarely scheduled his sales calls, often arriving without an appointment. With a smile on his face and a sales bag full of stories, he’d ask “Have you got five seconds?” He had a knack for presenting the shoes he was selling with finesse and panache, lovingly taking out one shoe at a time, and presenting them along with a story of how that shoe came to be.
Brian was embraced by his safety footwear colleagues in his later years. He had earned his place at the table and was always welcomed by his customers whenever he popped in. He had finally achieved a level of financial comfort that had eluded him for many intervening years. Brian never seemed all that interested in spending the money he made, though. There were no vacations, no extravagances. He seemed content in his apartment in Campbellville, Ontario and with the purchase of a gently used car every couple of years. Brian was a friend to many though and even late in life could be found holding court at local pubs in the Milton area. He was a character and a soft touch if you needed someone to spot you a drink.
There are probably few today who can relate to the life of a travelling salesman and it is possible that Brian was the last of his kind and generation still working. Despite the ups and downs over 60 years Brian was always the optimist, a quality which Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman couldn’t lay claim. Brian Suckling helped make Mellow Walk what it is today: a thriving safety footwear business and Toronto’s last shoe factory. We will miss him. Without a doubt, and in all kinds of ways, we are richer for knowing and working with him.
Thank you Brian. From your friends and colleagues at Mellow Walk. With much love.
w to use its markings. Certification is an on-going process, designed to ensure safety for customers, even beyond the certification of a particular shoe. Factories, like Mellow Walk, undergo ongoing compliance testing and CSA audits every three months, to ensure that certified products continue to meet the CSA standard.
