Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 1, 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE C1 ARTS ● LIFE ARTS@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM TUESDAY MARCH 1, 2022 CONNECT WITH THE BEST ARTS AND LIFE COVERAGE IN MANITOBA SECTION C▼ ‘I am the wrong person to complain to about the weather,” Howard Raber says ju-bilantly midway through a Winnipeg Jan- uary, wearing a golf shirt as he opens the door to his family’s factory on McDermot Avenue. Raber does not mind the cold. It’s the reason he is in business. Had his grandparents immigrated in 1925 to a warmer place, their grandson’s opinion on the windchill might differ. But the ancestors chose Winnipeg — not such a bad place to be in the busi- ness of making gloves. When it’s freezing outside, which in the winter- time is often, if not always, Howard Raber consid- ers himself especially lucky. “When it’s cold out, we are everybody’s best friend.” It has been like that since 1941, when Raber’s grandfather Abraham and Abraham’s teenage son Sunny started the Raber Glove Manufacturing Co. Ltd. The company has made hundreds of thou- sands of pairs of gloves: dress gloves, beekeep- er’s gloves, work gloves, fire-retardant gauntlet gloves, the high gauntlet glove worn by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during their famous musical ride. But of all those gloves, the company’s biggest and most well-known calling card has a name, inspired by its origins, that seems antithetical to it becoming a hot commodity: the Garbage Mitt. “One American vendor called me and said, ‘Howard, is it a good idea to call your products garbage?’” Raber recalls. He gets this response often from the uninitiat- ed. But he liked the name so much that in 2012, after decades making the mitts, Raber Glove trademarked the trashy moniker. Other compa- nies may make mitts, but only Raber Glove can say its mitts are Garbage. “He didn’t understand,” Raber says. “The Gar- bage Mitt is a Winnipeg thing.” ● ● ● THERE’S a reason for the name. Beginning in the 1950s, the unlined version of the glove was the hand-wear of choice for the City of Winnipeg’s trash collectors, who wore them year-round, even in summer. The leather was durable. It did not rip. When handling glass and sharp metals, the gloves of- fered protection from cuts and scrapes. The leath- er was well-sewn and thick enough to prevent garbage water from ever touching flesh. The original garment was a cowhide mitt with a removable liner. “We were given no uniform, no hats, no noth- ing,” says Bob Pruden, a Winnipeg garbageman for three summers in the mid-1960s. “Nothing was issued except for a pair of Garbage Mitts.” Work-wear has long been a source of consumer inspiration. The thinking goes that if a pair of pants is hardy enough for a carpenter, or a jacket warm enough for a Winnipeg bus driver, it must be good enough for the average customer. But the Garbage Mitt may be the only instance of a fash- ion trend originating from the dumpster. Long before Pruden, now 74, started collecting trash, he was already a fan of Garbage Mitts, a style many companies adopted and a term that entered the local lexicon. “The mitts were ubiquitous,” says Pruden who said garbage collecting was the best job ever. “I wore them everywhere and for everything, except to church.” He wore them to school, to play road hockey, and even on the ice, where the mitts served as his first hockey gloves. His father had to write his name inside in in- delible ink, so they wouldn’t mistakenly be taken home by a classmate or friend with an identical pair. “Not much chance of that, because we hard- ly took them off.” The Garbage Mitt was a winning look for kids, adults and even competitive athletes: in an era of ice-cold curling clubs, the Garbage Mitt became a choice piece of gear at local rinks. “Warmth-wise, it was the better glove to wear,” says Connie Laliberte, who won junior provincial titles in 1976 and ‘77, and skipped the first Man- itoba women’s team — with Chris More, and her own sisters Corinne Peters and Janet Arnott — to a world title in 1984. “I know all of us wore them in 1984,” says Laliberte, considered one of the province’s best curlers ever. “They certainly were prominent in our province.” So prominent that when Winnipeg’s Katherine Barber was assembling the first edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, in 1998, “Garbage Mitt” was included: “GARBAGE MITT, n, slang, a thickly padded deerskin mitt, typically worn by garbagemen in the winter.” BEN WALDMAN Howard Raber, the company’s third-generation president, trademarked the name Garbage Mitts in 2012. Partially completed Garbage Mitts wait for their cuffs. Raber Glove’s Garbage Mitts went from being dumpster darlings to the must-have Winnipeg winter accessory ● CONTINUED ON D2 Cold and snowy winters are a fact of life in Winnipeg, and this winter has proven to be colder and snowier than most. Amid blizzards, extreme temperature warnings and icy breezes that can freeze skin in only a minute, there’s always something warm that can make these chilly months bearable. Whether it’s to fight off winter’s chill or to create recreational activities, Winnipeg needs warmth to make it happen. Some- times it is even the warmth in someone’s heart. So maybe throw another log on the fire, or inch that blanket up a little further and join the Free Press on our investigation of this elusive, yet essential item of a Winnipeg winter. Warmth. Much of Raber’s plant on McDermot Avenue today is the same as it was in the early days. An old photo taken in the factory PHOTOS BY MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS At Raber Glove Manufacturing Co., the key steps in making its trademarked Garbage Mitts, as well as gloves, are done by hand. Here, Rosalinda Gabisan sews the liner into Garbage Mitts. ONE MAN’S TRASH… C_01_Mar-01-22_FP_01.indd 1 2022-02-28 4:27 PM ;