Levine Brothers Plumbing Company is one of the only fourth-generation, family-owned businesses operating in Montreal. Arthur Levine started the company in 1922 after he was fired from his job as an apprentice at Star Plumbers. Exhausted from a long weekend of gallivanting, Levine took a nap in a tub he lugged up four flights of stairs at a local job site. He woke up to his infuriated boss who fired him on the spot. After that day, Arthur worked for himself, borrowing money for materials and building his business one client at a time through word of mouth across Montreal’s predominantly Jewish “Downtown” neighborhood (today’s Plateau and Mile End).
The rest of the family quickly joined him, including Arthur’s father, Isaac Levine, a blacksmith who immigrated to Montreal from Kiev in the 1890s. Arthur’s younger brother Jack, who was delivering groceries by bicycle at the time, quit his job and joined the business in 1931. As a plumber in the 1930s, Jack took the streetcar from client to client with a single sac of tools, serving everyone in the neighborhood—from the factory workers on St. Dominique to the wealthy doctors on de l’Esplanade.
As the company grew and eventually settled into its current office in a converted residence on de Bullion, it witnessed a century of plumbing advances. It saw a neighbourhood of coldwater flats heated manually with coal evolve into homes with running warm water and central heating. Today, the Levine Brothers occupies every inch of its de Bullion triplex with 20 service trucks run by over 45 employees. These trucks serve as “shops on wheels” allowing the plumbers to replace any part of a clients’ plumbing. Over the years, Jack’s son Elliot with his partner and brother Neal bought out five other plumbing companies. Today, Levine Brothers offers every kind of plumbing, from commercial to industrial and residential. The company even provides insurance claim evaluations to assist its claims assessors and to provide consulting services for law firms and municipalities.
This fourth-generation company is now helmed by Elliot’s son Benjamin Levine along with his brother-in-law Jacob Bratin and Johnny Walbert. Despite the company’s massive growth, they pride themselves on being a familial business. In one of his most memorable experiences, Elliot helped a client who went into labour at a job site get to the hospital in time to deliver her baby. Although the materials and standards of plumbing and heating have changed, Elliot insists “the job has always been about being there to help and comfort people in a time of distress.”
Sources
Castonguay, Stephane and Michèle Dagenais. Metropolitan Natures: Environmental Histories of Montreal. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011.
Delean, Paul. “The Creation of a Pipe Dream.” The Montreal Gazette 16 October 2012. Print.
Kobayashi, Audrey. Women, Work and Place. Montreal: MacGill-Queen's U, 1994. Print.
*Images courtesy of Elliot Levine.
