the company, which has a thread factory on chabanel st. and a dye facility in st-michel, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month and schachter is proud to underline that cansew remains a family business. it’s owned and run by him and his two cousins, brothers mark and jack schachter. they’re the third generation of schachters to helm the textile business.
cansew was founded in 1924 by their grandfather, aron schachter, a jewish immigrant from austria who began selling buttons and later thread from the living room of his apartment on st-urbain st., right across from baron byng high school . his day job was delivering beer for frontenac breweries.
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it’s a classic slice of montreal history, something that could have been pulled from the pages of a mordecai richler novel — the tale of a jewish immigrant family starting in the thread biz from an apartment on st-urbain st. and eventually turning it into a successful family business.
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in fact, cansew did well during the pandemic , selling a huge quantity of elastics for masks, and sewing threads that went into masks, hospital gowns and ppe.
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