Udisco Ltd
As told to the MSP by Monsieur Lyon Kunin, president of Udisco Ltd, August 7th, 2021:
“In 1942, Jack Kunin bought a farmhouse at 4660 Decarie Blvd and the family moved in on the second floor, while Jack Kunin began a company called Utility Hardware on the first floor. In 1948 he sold a piece of land next door to a notary who built a building on that land and rented it to Dominion Stores. With the money from the land Jack Kunin expanded the front of the farmhouse and added a storefront on the side which he rented to Troy laundry. By 1954 the company had diversified into photographic supplies and hobbies, so the name was changed to Utility Distributing Company. The Kunin family moved out of the upstairs of the house to Côte St-Luc. Utility moved its offices upstairs into what was the house, giving more room for the business.
In 1961, the city expropriated part of the front lawn to expand Decarie Blvd and build the Decarie Expressway (hole in the ground). With that money, he built the warehouse in the rear of the building. In 1966 Mark and Lyon Kunin entered the company full time and they eliminated hardware and photography from what the company sold, and expanded the hobbies.
In 1972 the company opened a branch warehouse in Etobicoke, Ontario, but there was already a company in Ontario using the Utility Distributing name, So the company name was changed to Udisco which was its telex address having taken the U from Utility, the DIS from DIStributing and the CO from COmpany. That same year, Jack Kunin parked in the Dominion parking lot and the manager came out and yelled “You dirty Jew, get your car out of this lot”. This infuriated Jack, since he bought all his groceries from Dominion. He especially did not like the slur and came into the office ready to explode. Six of his wife’s brothers fought in the war with one, Moe Hurwitz, being highly decorated and killed in action just as the war ended. Another brother-in-law was a prisoner of war. Lyon then proposed to buy the Dominion building and throw Dominion out. Jack called the notary he sold the land to confirming he still owned it, and the next afternoon bought the building back. The next day, Dominion was sent a registered letter advising that their lease would not be renewed the next year. The VP of Dominion flew to Montreal for a meeting and was told why. We parted on good terms and the next day the manager no longer had a job.
The two buildings were then tied together, the pool hall that occupied it was evicted, and Udisco expanded into the second floor of the Dominion Building. A year later, Dominion moved out, and Udisco expanded into the basement and rented the first floor store to Consumer Carpet.
Around 1990, a developer bought up all the buildings around Udisco’s building in Etobicoke and in the middle of the night, bulldozed everything, leaving Udisco’s building the only thing around. The developer went to rezone and Udisco objected, so they came and bought the Udisco building also. The plan was to build high density homes which would have created problems when trucks delivering merchandise would have rolled through the streets. Udisco closed its warehouse in Etobicoke.
Consumer Carpet sold its store to Tapis Beaubien, which went bankrupt in 1998 and the store was then rented to Bucarest Deli. Troy laundry had closed and several small stores replaced them, until 1995 when Udisco took over the store as Hobbie Universel. Mark died in 2015 and his son replaced him, but Mark’s share of the company was divided between his three sons, two of whom did not work for the company and were not interested in it.
In 2020 the STM came along and wanted to buy the building. This did not work out because of the Bucarest lease so, after almost a year, the STM expropriated the building, Udisco, and Bucarest in late March of 2021, forcing everyone out by Auguest 1, 2021. At this point, Lyon was 78 and was simply not up to moving and restarting elsewhere within 120 days, and Udisco was liquidated.”
M. Kunin donated two signs to the MSP: a large blue plexi sign with illustrations of a model steam engine, two remote control models (a light plane and a helicopter), and an enthusiastic hobbyist holding the remote. The other sign is a steam train rendered in neon inside a massive metal casing. M. Kunin again: “The train box was there when we bought the building in 1972. I don’t remember what was in it, but I suspect Decarie Billiards who occupied the second floor. I had it converted to a train sign. It may have been Lightman signs which is out of business today. It was serviced by a couple of sign companies, the last of which was Hollywood Signs.”