Calvin Toews Lawrence Toews

Our company was founded on 3 Strong Principles:

>Selection

>Price

>Customer Service

Both our Grand Father Peter Toews and Father Leo Toews had the principal, if we can't supply our customers with a high quality instrument with a price that's unbeatable then our customer service is not worth allot.

To stay true to this successful founding principal is why we deal factory direct with our Factory Certified Pre-Owned Yamaha and Kawai pianos.

(And our piano prices are unbeatable)

Here is our family story:

Toews Music and Sewing was founded by Peter Toews. Peter was born in 1911 he was 19 years old at the start of the great depression, At a very young age he decided that he would rather push a pencil than a plow. As a result he became a door to door salesman for Rawleigh products in Steinbach Manitoba.

Rawleigh was the original Antiseptic Save

Rawleigh Antiseptic Salve is recommended for superficial burns, scalds, blisters, boils, bruises, minor cuts and wounds, minor sunburn, chapped, chafed and irritated skin surfaces, bee stings, chapped hands, cracked feet, ear aches, hives, insect bites, rashes (including diaper and prickly heat rash), saddle sores, warts, & as a poultice. Antiseptic Salve can also be used on animals.

There was no government health care program during the great depression. Peter Toews would go from farm to farm. Many farmers could not read; however Peter could read well, he would read in a loud confident voice the label as shown in the above box. The answer was always (Yes!) We need that on the family farm.

Rawleigh was also a sauce and liniment company, and Peter realized quickly that people who lived on farms had huge gardens. All they needed was salt, pepper, cinnamon, sugar and other Rawleighs flavors and extracts. This made the woman of the house an amazing miracle gourmet cook, allowing food to taste great and happily feeding the hard working men of the household. Peter Toews learned how to adapt to his market place. So he would take chickens, eggs, butter, apples or just about anything in trade for Rawleigh products because people simply had no money.

He would drive the produce to market and resell it.

At the age of 25 he married his long time sweetheart Catherina Doerksen.

Steinbach, Manitoba had extraordinary very harsh winters and in 1947 in the middle of an ice & snow blizzard they packed up the kids and moved west to Chilliwack, BC. As a young boy Leo Toews still remembers arriving in Rosedale to find cherry blossoms growing on the trees, it was the California of Canada.

Peter started a new career with the Elna sewing machine company, after receiving his technical service training in Switzerland he opened Toews Sewing in 1950. Soon Toews Sewing became one of Canada's top sewing machine dealers for Elna.

Peter Toews was well known in town, he loved making deals, every day was a new day and how many things could you do in a day???

Toews Family photo
Top left Leo, Peter, Menno,
Joanna, Rachel, Catherina, Edna, Jennie

One day Peter was dealing with a woman, who was a music teacher, she had an Italian made accordion she wanted to trade for a sewing machine. A deal was made that included 5 lessons. Peter Toews gave to his son Leo, the accordion and the 5 lessons as a gift unaware of how it would change the future.

In 1968 Leo and Peter Toews went out and purchased $3,500 worth of music inventory and rented a 300 sq foot store that was a 2 chair barber shop. In 1968 the Beatles were huge and so were music sales. They sold everything they had in there first month, resulting in very fast expansion. Within 2 years they went from 300sq feet to 18,000 sq feet of sales and warehouse space, including a freight elevator for the New Yamaha pianos.

In 1971 Leo Toews was invited to stay at the home/mansion estate of the owner of Yamaha and tour the Yamaha factory.

In 1979 the interest rate in Canada skyrocketed up, up, up eventually setting a new record at 22%. However, Leo had the same drive and passion that his father in the 1930s great depression, Leo acquired a prime real-estate location of the IGA grocery store and converted it into Toews Music on Clearbrook Road.

In 1980 Leo's oldest son Calvin Toews like his grandfather started in the sewing machine business and things went very well winning top sales awards from Pfaff, Singer, and Janome.

During this time Lawrence Toews was working hard keeping up with his music lessons at our 500 student Toews Yamaha Music School. Lawrence was a star student advancing from regional, to provincial and Canadian top honors winning 1^st place in the Yamaha Canadian keyboard competition. As a result Lawrence Toews was also invited to represent Canada in the Yamaha Global keyboard competition in Japan, on a song he wrote called Tonight at Sunrise. As a piano tuner technician, the back bone of the piano industry Lawrence takes care of the piano customer service and tech support.