Canada’s oldest hockey stick manufacturer is scrambling after a sudden change to U.S. trade rules. As it stands, Roustan Hockey churns out 400,000 wooden sticks a year under the Christian, Northland and Sherwood brands, with 100,000 bound for the United States, and it also makes plastic‑bladed road hockey sticks and foam‑core goalie sticks.
However, the company says the Trump administration’s removal in late August of a widely used customs exemption for international shipments under $800 has injected fresh uncertainty into cross‑border sales. “Even if somebody buys one or two or five or 10 sticks and it’s under $100, they’re going to be affected by the tariffs, so the jury is still out on how that’s going to impact business,” Graeme Roustan, CEO and owner of Roustan Hockey, told the Independent yesterday.
The change has already translated into immediate disruption. Shipments to the U.S. have been pulled for manual inspections and subjected to surprise tariff assessments, which the company’s customs broker has, in some cases, managed to have waived. Shipments of goalie pads produced at a separate Toronto factory were recently flagged for an unexpected 200 per cent tariff, managers said, creating paperwork battles and delivery delays that frustrate dealers and customers alike.
“You never know what Trump will do, said Bo Crawford, general manager, Roustan Hockey. “You just have to roll with it, and the president of the U.S. can change his mind day to day, week to week, hour to hour. So yeah, we have to deal with it the best we can.”
Those operational headaches sit against a broader decline in Canadian manufacturing. Statistics Canada figures show the economy contracted 1.6 per cent in the second quarter and exports fell 7.5 per cent; some 37,800 manufacturing jobs were lost in the year to August, and real investment in industrial machinery and equipment dropped to the lowest level since records began in 1981, economists at the National Bank of Canada warned.
The Roustan plant is a study in resilience. Tracing its lineage to 1847, it is the last North American commercial manufacturer of traditional wooden hockey sticks, outlasting dozens of workshops that once clustered across Ontario, Quebec and Minnesota. Global output now totals approximately 5 million sticks per year, but wood accounts for only about one in ten; no NHL player has regularly used a wooden stick in well over a decade, as composites have dominated the market.
“It’s very hard to compete against some of the Asian markets and some of our competitors that are in other countries,” Crawford said. “But our quality kind of stands for itself.”
Roustan does not sugarcoat the challenge. “Right now, we have, you know, 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the market. But it’s diminishing every year. And the kids growing up today are all about composites. So yes, it’s a shrinking market for sure,” he said.
At Roustan’s 130,000-square-foot plant, the process remains low-tech and artisanal: workers glue fibreglass reinforcing sheets to wooden blades in batches, trim excess with band saws, dip sticks in paint, and hang them to dry on moving hooks. Keeping production in Canada, Roustan argues, is about more than margins. “It’s important to any country to have a manufacturing base of products that you consume on a regular basis,” Roustan said. “Having a factory that makes hockey sticks in Canada really serves two purposes. One, it contributes to the manufacturing base. But two, (it) has the legacy and the tug of the heartstrings of the game that we all love in Canada.”
For now, Roustan’s playbook is focused on damage control: contesting unexpected tariffs, pressing shipments through inspections, reassuring jittery buyers, and keeping the production line moving in a shrinking niche. The immediate markers to watch are pending customs rulings, any changes to the $800 exemption, and the next wave of shipments to major U.S. dealers. Shipment by shipment, Roustan and its customers will find out whether a nearly two‑century‑old maker can survive tariffs and the steady march of composite technology.
