EARL AND LEONA MCDERMID have never abandoned the tenets of honesty and business integrity, twentieth-century values which have been the rock foundation of their company’s mission statement for almost 30 years.

From its beginning “shoe-string” operation in 1971 to its role as Canada’s leading paper converter, McDermid Paper Converters has consistently pursued innovation mainly as the result of the visionary foresight of Earl McDermid, company founder, and Leona Crouse McDermid, his wife of 48 years. Products of the Great Depression, Earl and Leona came from middle-class families who instilled in them the values of hard work, dedication, and commitment.

Lance and Michael McDermid, Earl and Leona’s two sons, joined the company’s management team in 1978 and 1980, respectively. Their collective contribution to the needs of the company has been of multiple significance both in new product development and corporate direction. As well, daughter Lori-Anne joined the firm in 1979 as a Sales Representative and Public Relations Officer. Today, an accomplished photographer, Lori-Anne’s valuable lens and film skills have assisted the company in product promotion.

Long before he founded McDermid Paper Converters Inc., Earl, an avowed Canadian patriot, voiced his support for Canadian Confederation in numerous articles and many speeches. During the 1995 Quebec Referendum, he advised and received responses from senior Canadian officials. In a letter from Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, November, 1995, the Prime Minister expressed to Earl his “appreciation for the time you have taken to share your thoughts and feelings about the future of the nation. It is my strong desire that you will continue to lend your support, as we go about developing innovative response to the profound desire for change being felt among all Canadians.”
 

Earl and Leona McDermid, founders, 1971, McDermid Paper Converters.  [Photo, courtesy Lori-Anne McDermid]

Born in Kagawong, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, 1929, Earl found his way into the world at the hand of his compassionate Aunt Janet (Janetta) McDermid Palmer, who served as mid-wife/nurse in the absence of a doctor, often the case in remote areas. In 1951, he met Leona, of Ukrainian descent, born, 1933, on the Saskatchewan prairie in the tiny village of Goodeve.  Married a year after they met while they were working for the Massey Harris Farm Machinery Company in Toronto, Earl and Leona instantly created a team which complimented each others skills, Earl, as salesman and innovator, Leona, as administrator and financial supervisor.

The function of paper converting is an accurate assessment of the core activities of McDermid Paper Converters since 1971. In the field of paper grade creation and improvement, this all-Canadian company has provided and is still providing economic opportunities for Canada worldwide.

The first and most notable of the company’s innovations came to fruition in 1976 when Earl McDermid proposed the production of a non-existent paper grade, hopefully to save a northern Ontario paper mill from closing. The new paper became an almost overnight success and is today in demand by other paper converters and commercial printers, saving and creating thousands of jobs all across North America. Today this same but much improved paper is one of Canada’s most valued exports.

A second company innovation was a successful attempt to overcome performance problems in cash registers and banking rolls, where existing paper grades could not perform. This was overcome by the addition of one simple finishing station inserted into the production line at mill level causing paper fibers to be redirected. The positive results created a new specification and perfect function in all dedicated applications. Several large mills in the United States today produce bond paper using McDermid’s own form of this process.

The third and most significant contribution of McDermid Paper Converters to the world of communications came with the successful refinement of facsimile paper to an affordable semi-generic allowing all manufacturers and distributors to share in an opportunity of gigantic proportions. In 1982 very few people in North America knew what a facsimile or fax machine was, let alone how it worked or the kind of paper it used, that is, until Michael McDermid discovered one of only a handful of these seemingly magical machines in use. Driven by curiosity, the development of thermal paper for fax machines became a preoccupation of the McDermid company in order to bring this surprising but obvious pearl of paper futuristics to the worldwide multi-billion dollar industry that it had the potential to become.

The soon to be recognized problem was the complexity of the various types of thermal paper compliant with each make and model of fax machine which quickly was replacing teletype and telex machines. It was not until 1985 that McDermid’s Research and Development Department broke through the variables of the image barrier to create an applied thermal generic that would reduce user cost and bring a high quality product to retail shelves all over the world.

McDermid marketing managers chose the stationery and business machine distribution lanes to launch their most important paper improvement idea in the company’s history. To this day, original packaging and simplified marketing concept, created by Lance and Michael McDermid, has not been improved upon, making the trade name Telefax‚ an international standard for manufacturing specifications everywhere.

In between and since those years of implementation and change, McDermid Paper Converters, always concerned with protecting the environment, has introduced innumerable basic fundamentals that form an integral part of the industry as a whole.

The best example of this is soon to be revealed in a new applied to paper “host” invention. The value equivalent has not been seen in the paper industry over the last half century. This new inventive process carries a worldwide patent and will soon be recognized in offices large and small, wherever photocopiers and high-speed printing presses are in use.

The future of paper converting will continue to develop and expand. Products in demand, such as McDermid’s specialty and digital printing paper, will change to meet the needs of the new Millennium. And McDermid Paper Converters is determined to lead the way.