Born,
1924, Ustrobna, Poland, Stan Jasinski, during the early war years, worked
in the same stone quarry as Jozef Wojtyla, still another Polish-born citizen
who would, in 1978, become His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, the first Polish
Pope of the Roman Catholic Church to be elected in 450 years. Stan escaped
Communism in Eastern Europe, 1966, after acquiring an engineering degree
in Germany and a Master of Science Degree in Poland. Immigrating to Canada,
1967, Stan’s twofold dream was to begin anew in a world where people respected
and treated each other equally and to establish his own company where such
ideals could be introduced. After a month in Canada, Stan sent for his
wife, Ruth, and after brief stops in Welland and Toronto, founded in Woodstock,
Ontario, Hyd-Mech Engineering Ltd., 1978. Sales were a meager $80,000 in
1980. But over the next three years, Stan’s company was on the move breaking
$3 million in sales. By 1995, with facilities in Woodstock, Ontario, Houston,
Texas, and Pueblo, Colorado, Hyd-Mech was clearly a company with a future
and at the forefront of metal sawing technology and in the top tier of
bandsaw manufacturers in the world. Stan, in this view, one year after
his arrival in Canada, exclaims today that Canada has been very good to
him. It gave him the required freedom to develop his own business. When
he semi-retired, 1997, Stan left a considerable number of shares to his
Hyd-Mech employees and turned the company’s operations over to a new management
team. [Photo, courtesy Hyd-Mech Engineering Ltd.]