Stan Weiss
Larry Wolfe
Stan Weiss est originaire de Malartic, une petite ville miniere d’or dans l’ouest de Quebec. How’s my French? Definitely not as good as Stan’s. Stan is a native of Malartic, a small gold-mining town in western Quebec, where French is the first language of 90 percent of the population. He graduated from St. Martins, a French-language high school, where he played hockey and fast pitch softball. Like many young men in the area, he played in numerous hockey leagues and became a miner after graduation. However, life “underground” was not for Stan, so after a year as a miner, he hitchhiked 600 plus miles to Toronto where he luckily found a job with Ford Motor Company. And that was the end of Stan’s mining career!
After five years at Ford, Stan worked for the Toronto Transit Commission where he operated buses, streetcars and subway trains. He then joined G. W. Ramm, a waste management company, where he was a driver and later a dispatcher. After five years with them, Stan took the big step of starting his own waste management company. He specialized in “back alley” pick-ups, apartments and restaurants, including 53 McDonalds. He grew that company to a seven-truck operation before being bought out by Superior Sanitation (now a part of the huge Waste Management Corporation.) Stan worked under a five-year contract with them before becoming Operations Manager for Simcoe County’s transfer station operations.
Seven years later he was again bitten by the “entrepreneurial bug” and started his own company, M.W.R.C. (Municipal Waste & Recycling). Over the years he built that company to cover 32 municipalities with 36 trucks and nearly 50 employees. In 2010 he sold that business and retired.
Today Stan and wife Doreen enjoy winters in Sun Lakes and summers back at their home in picturesque Blind River, Ontario, a small town on the north channel of Lake Huron. You’d probably guess he’s an avid fisherman back home. He’s also the unofficial “lamb and pig roast king” of the area, coordinating roasts for weddings, reunions and organizations such as the Knights of Columbus and Rotary.
As self-described “Nascar nuts,” Stan and Doreen have attended 11 Daytona 500’s and races at a dozens of other tracks throughout the USA and Canada. Stan’s also an avid fan of the Chicago Blackhawks, White Sox and Bears.
Stan just recently got back into softball, encouraged (cajoled?) by fellow Canadian Frank Tanner. He hadn’t played since his days back in Malartic and with Ford’s industrial league teams. He’s now in his second year of Sun Lakes softball and is thoroughly enjoying himself. He loves the camaraderie with the guys and feels his swing is “finally coming around.”
When asked what he’s most proud of, Stan noted the accomplishments of starting his own companies, particularly M.W.R.C. He’s proud to have seen them grow into major successes allowing him to provide livelihoods for many families. As they say in French, “Bon travail, Monsieur Weiss!”