Yesterday | Advertorial | Marcy Lalonde

“My hands won’t give me another winter at that bench. These are the last pairs I’ll ever sew.” Why a 76-year-old upholsterer from Northern Ontario is selling his favourite handmade earmuffs online for the first and last time

Since 1998, Elwood Brassard has sewn soft spotted earmuffs in Timmins, Ontario, where January mornings hit minus thirty. His hands won’t let him go on, and his last 263 pairs are the end of it.

Elwood Brassard (76) in his shop on Third Avenue. After 29 winters, these are the last earmuffs he will make.

Timmins, November. The snow came early to the north this year, and the front window of Brassard Upholstery on Third Avenue is already frosted at the corners. Inside, the baseboard heater ticks, a half-finished wingback chair waits on the trestle, and the long workbench at the back is covered in soft spotted faux fur. Cardboard circles hang from a nail. A roll of brown faux suede leans against the wall. Elwood Brassard has unlocked this door every morning since 1972. In a few weeks he will lock it for the last time.

“It’s the hands,” he says, and holds them up. The knuckles are swollen, and he can’t close his right fist all the way. “Arthritis. Doc’s been telling me for two winters. A pair of these is five hours of fine stitching, and some mornings now I can’t hold the needle.” He has sold the building. A fellow from Sudbury is turning it into condos. He shrugs, the way northern men shrug about things that hurt. “So that’s it.”

He isn’t sad about the chairs. Other people can re-cover chairs. What he is sad about are the earmuffs. “Nobody else is going to make these,” he says. “And people come in here every December asking for them like I’m Canada Post.”

A parade sleigh, a crossing guard – and a name the kids gave her

Every November, Timmins holds its Santa Claus Parade, and for years Santa rode down the street on an old wooden sleigh. In the fall of 1998 the parade committee brought that sleigh to Elwood and asked him to re-cover the seat. They had bought a bolt of spotted faux fur that was supposed to look like reindeer. “It looked like a fawn,” Elwood says. “Reindeer don’t have spots. Up here you’d think somebody would know that.”

There was a remnant left over. His wife Yvette was a school crossing guard on Algonquin Boulevard, and she stood out in the wind every morning and every afternoon. “Her ears were always red. Every single day,” he says. So he cut two circles from the remnant, stuffed them like a cushion, covered a padded band in brown suede left over from a client’s armchair, and gave them to her on the night of the parade. The next morning, a little girl from Grade 2 stopped in the middle of the crosswalk and shouted: “Madame Reindeer!” By Christmas, half of Timmins was calling her that – in both languages – and the mothers started showing up at the shop.

Every band is padded and covered by hand, the same way Elwood finishes the arm of a chair.

What makes a pair of Reindeer Earmuffs so special

Third Avenue at 3 p.m., minus twenty-two and a north wind – and two very warm ears.

At first glance it is the fur: soft, round, spotted cups that look like something off an old Christmas card. People stop strangers at the grocery store to ask about them. But Elwood says the real difference is in the part nobody looks at – the band.

“Store earmuffs either pinch or they slide,” he explains. “Cheap plastic band, a little bit of fuzz glued on, and by lunchtime you’ve got a headache.” His bands are built like the arm of a good chair: a firm core inside, a layer of soft padding over it, and a fabric cover pulled tight and stitched underneath so there is no seam on top of your head. “Firm on the inside, soft on the outside. That’s all upholstery is,” he says. The cups are cut from his own cardboard templates, filled like little cushions so they stay round, and sit flat and warm over the whole ear. They weigh next to nothing. They won’t flatten a fresh hairdo the way a toque does. And there is no real fur in them at all – not one hair.

There are four colours. Fawn is the original from 1998: soft sand with cream spots on a brown suede band, just like Yvette’s. Snow is ivory on a white knitted band, the one brides and church ladies ask for. Ginger is soft white fur with warm ginger streaks on a cream velvet band – “that’s Josée’s, she’s my red-headed granddaughter,” Elwood says. And Silver is pale grey with dark lynx spots on black velvet, the dressiest of the four. “The husbands buy that one for their wives. Then they borrow it to shovel the driveway.”

“The kids from that crosswalk are parents now”

Above the cash register hangs a corkboard so crowded with photographs and Christmas cards that you can no longer see the cork. A girl on a toboggan in 1999, cheeks bright red, ears in Fawn. A teenager at an outdoor hockey rink. A bride on the snowy steps of the church in Snow. Elwood taps a faded school picture. “That’s Chantal. Grade 2. She’s the one who yelled ‘Madame Reindeer’ in the middle of the street.” Pinned right underneath is a card from last winter: Chantal, now 35, with two little girls, all three in Reindeer Earmuffs.

The reason they last that long is simple: time. Every pair starts as four circles of fur cut by hand around a cardboard template, with the spots laid so they run the same way on both ears. The cups are sewn, turned and filled. The band is padded, covered and hand-stitched underneath. Then everything is brushed out so the fur stands up soft and even. About five hours per pair. “A factory makes five hundred in that time,” Elwood says. “I make one. But mine are still on people’s heads twenty years later. I’ve got the pictures to prove it.”

The back room on Third Avenue: the last 263 pairs. When they’re gone, there won’t be any more.

Why this winter is the last one

Yvette passed away in the spring of 2021. Elwood kept making the earmuffs anyway. “First winter after, I almost didn’t,” he says. “Then a lady came in on the first of December and asked for a pair for her mother. Yvette would have had my head if I’d said no.” Now his hands have made the decision for him. The building is sold, and on December 15 he hands over the keys. His son lives in Sudbury and has his own work. “There’s nobody to take it over, and I won’t pretend there is.”

On the shelves in the back room there are exactly 263 pairs left. Instead of boxing them up, Elwood has made a decision: for the first and last time, every pair goes for less than half of what he has always asked. “I don’t want them in a storage locker,” he says. “I want them on ears. On somebody’s mom at the bus stop, on a kid at the outdoor rink. That’s what they’re for.”

His granddaughter Josée (24) handles the online orders from Ottawa. “Josée set the whole thing up on the computer. I sew, she clicks,” Elwood laughs. “She tells me people in Victoria are buying them. Victoria! I said, what for? She said, for their mothers back east.”

What sets Elwood’s Reindeer Earmuffs apart:

Before the first stitch: Elwood lines up the spots and cuts every circle around his old cardboard template.

What customers say about their Reindeer Earmuffs

A Christmas present that actually gets worn

Lise M. (54) from Kapuskasing gave her mother a pair of Snow last Christmas. “Maman is 81 and she hates anything on her head. Toques itch, scarves are too warm, everything’s wrong,” she says. “She put these on at the table to be polite and kept them on through the tourtière. Now she wears them every Sunday to Mass, and three of the ladies there have asked me where they came from.”

Under the tree: for many families, the one present that gets used every single day.

Where can you get Elwood’s Reindeer Earmuffs?

Elwood’s earmuffs are only available through County Craft, an online shop that works with small, independent makers. Josée looks after her grandfather’s little corner of the shop. Only there will you get the original Reindeer Earmuffs from Elwood’s upholstery shop. Spotted lookalikes from mass production have started showing up on Amazon and the big shopping sites. From a distance they may look similar. Up close, and on a cold morning, they have nothing to do with Elwood’s work.

Only until December 15 – then the shop closes

“By the middle of December I’d like every last pair to have found a head,” Elwood says, folding a pair of Fawn into tissue paper. He looks out of the window toward Algonquin Boulevard, where a new crossing guard in a bright orange vest is waving the school bus through. “Twenty-nine winters. Yvette would say that’s enough.”

If you would like a pair of the original Reindeer Earmuffs from Elwood’s last batch, don’t wait too long. With the sale price and the Christmas rush, the remaining 263 pairs are not expected to last until December 15.

It is the last chance to own real handmade earmuffs from a northern upholstery shop – before the lights go out at Brassard Upholstery for good.

Our verdict

Reindeer Earmuffs are the kind of winter accessory people fall for at first sight and then wear for years. They are made by hand in a little shop in Timmins, they are warm without pinching, and they have that soft, spotted charm that makes strangers smile at the bus stop.

A piece with real heart: well thought out, carefully made, and with fifty-four years of upholstery know-how in every band. Thank you, Elwood!

Readers love their Reindeer Earmuffs

Photos sent in by readers.