Paradis Pipes

Paradis Pipes is the last link in a pipe-making tradition spanning three generations in Quebec. Brothers Gilles and Fernand Paradis, who gave the brand its name, brought together in 1978, under their own stamp, the workshop knowledge they had inherited from their father's generation, building a mid-sized but entirely domestic production line distributed within Canada through tobacconists.

The Family's Introduction to Pipes

The story begins long before the brand, with the Paradis family's emigration to the United States in 1922. Lucien Paradis (1906-1979), sixteen years old at the time, took on an apprenticeship at the pipe factory of his uncle, Joseph B. Desjardins, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Known for its JD stamp, this business at one point employed sixty people, and Desjardins held two patents, for a machine used in shaping mouthpieces and for a bowl-reaming design.

This apprenticeship period closed with the Great Depression: left jobless in 1930, Lucien returned to Quebec and began working in farm machinery, continuing pipe making for a while as a side pursuit. After the rest of the family also settled in Quebec, he set up his own pipe factory around 1933 together with two of his brothers. At its largest, this business employed eighteen people and, by the 1960s, was producing more than fifty thousand pipes a year. Notably, production was not gathered under a single brand name: JBL, Dr. Thomas, Fernand Gignac, S.C. Pipes, New London Golfer, and Jo Thomassin-stamped pipes all came off the same benches. As a result, many pipes not obviously of Canadian make are, according to sources, traceable to this workshop.