“I always wanted to run my own business,” he says. “I didn’t know doing what exactly, but I was always looking.” When Nelson’s Furniture in Norwich became available, Isaac saw his opportunity. “John Honcoop and I bought the business together and named it H&S Furniture,” he explains. “We opened September 1, 1969.” In 1976, Isaac and John bought a second store, Davidson Hi- Way Furniture in Tillsonburg. Popularly known as ‘the big brown barn’, the new store meant each partner now had a store to run. Isaac kept the Norwich location
and John came to Tillsonburg. In 1984, however, John passed away, bringing the partnership to an abrupt end. “It was difficult after John died, but I decided to keep both stores and change the name to Stubbe’s Furniture,” Isaac explains. A few years later, he purchased an existing furniture store in Woodstock giving Stubbe’s Furniture three locations in Oxford County. By the early 1990s, however, large-format chain stores were presenting unprecedented challenges to mom and pop stores like Stubbes. “No one called it ‘big box retail’
learned the value of hard work early in life, their childhood woes didn’t begin to compare to their father’s experiences as a new Canadian. Immigrating to Canada “My family immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands in 1952,” says Isaac. “I was nine years old. We had paid an agent to take care of all the details for our arrival, but when we got here, no one came to meet us. There we were—my father, my mother and seven children—with no place to go.” The family had no choice but to split up and find lodging with whomever would take them in. “It took a few weeks for my father to find a job,” Isaac recalls. “Eventually, he got hired on at a beef farm. We moved into an old abandoned house without electricity or running water. My mother had to cook our meals outside on an old wood stove and most of our baths were in the nearby creek. We moved a few months later, but that’s how we began.” At the age of 14, Isaac got a job to help put bread on the table. A few years later, he started making concrete beams for a company in Woodstock, but his career didn’t last long. “I broke my back in ’62 and wasn’t able to do physical work anymore, so I went back to school and took commercial studies,” says Isaac. “I completed grades 9 to 12 in one year, and then got a job doing cost accounting.” While the new job was a good one, Isaac dreamed of doing more.
Isaac Stubbe
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