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Hodgson Plumbing & Mechanical Ltd
In 2011, brothers Dave and John Hodgson are looking back…and ahead…

Traditionally, plumbing has been a male-dominated industry. For 100 years, Hodgson Plumbing & Mechanical Ltd. has been passed down through the men in the family. Today, the most likely successors to John and Dave are their youngest daughters. This fact is presenting a puzzle for both families about the destiny of the company in the coming decades.

“Presently, the family members who might control Hodgson Plumbing in the future are my daughters and/or John’s daughters,” says Dave. “It is unclear at this time whether these young ladies will get involved in the plumbing industry. John and I have run this business since 1995. The question now is, what will the company look like in 15 years?”

Hodgson Plumbing was founded in 1896 by R.C. Hodgson. He passed the company to his son in the 1930s. Jim (J.R.) Hodgson operated the company through to the 1960s, when his son, Charles B. (C.B.) Hodgson, took the reins.

By this time, the company had undergone several name changes. In the beginning, when R.C. Hodgson partnered with hardware merchant E.J. Knowdell, the new plumbing service was called Knowdell and Hodgson. Under Jim Hodgson, the company was incorporated as Hodgson Ltd.

In the 1960s, Dave and John’s father changed the name to C.B. Hodgson Plumbing and Mechanical Ltd. In 2005, the company name was changed to its present incarnation, Hodgson Plumbing & Mechanical Ltd.

Vancouver in 1910 was an important–but small–Canadian city. The downtown portion of the city had almost entirely burned to the ground 25 years earlier. As Canada’s deepwater port to the Pacific, it was inevitable that Vancouver would grow into a major metropolitan centre in the coming century, especially given the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914.

Hodgson Plumbing & Mechanical Ltd
Vancouver was under construction–new streets, streetcar lines, and international harbor facilities. Development was also sprouting several miles away along the north arm of the Fraser river, called South Vancouver at the time.

Dave Hodgson has a collection of old Vancouver newspapers from the era, which recount a fascinating chronicle of the city and company founder R.C. Hodgson’s political ambitions in South Vancouver. (Advertisements offer residential city lots for a few hundred dollars–now worth half a million.)

R.C. Hodgson campaigned for Reeve of South Vancouver with a surprisingly ambitious platform of infrastructure projects connecting South Vancouver with the downtown core. In addition to city politics, R.C. was a member of the Rotary Club and the Fraternal Order of Masons. All this while he ran his plumbing business and raised a family!

Apparently, these activities didn’t prevent him from also finding the time for a new association of British Columbia’s plumbing industry. This new association would become the forerunner of today’s Mechanical Contractors Association (MCA-BC). It was called the National Association of Master Plumbers, Gas, Steam and Hot Water Fitters.

From its beginning in 1905 through to the present day, Hodgson Plumbing has been a member of the MCA-BC. When Dave Hodgson completed his plumbing apprenticeship in the 1980s, he took business administration courses under the auspices of MCA. His training has been key to the success of the company, and today the Hodgson brothers continue in their unwavering support of MCA’s goals and ideals.

Dave and John were born into the plumbing industry, but neither wanted to join it after high school. Dave considered a career in archeology or anthropology, but realized he could not have the family life he desired if he pursued those fields. John, too, pursued other paths before coming back to the solid opportunity offered by the family company.