By Peter Saunders
In 1979, when Mike Halprin moved with his parents from Winnipeg to Canmore, Alta., the Bow Valley town had no sign shop to speak of. Halprin’s father, Josh, who had done some screenprinting in the past, quickly seized the opportunity to fill the niche. He began working out of his basement and garage. By 1982, he had his own shop and was providing a wide variety of signs.
“Dad did a lot of everything back then,” says Halprin. “We were fairly poor when we moved here and limiting yourself in a small community would be like shooting yourself in the foot. He hand-painted signs on wood, glass, vehicles and plywood, then would turn to screenprinting as soon as someone ordered more than 20 of the same sign.”
Handing out his business card, Halprin’s father realized the town presented a strong opportunity for orders to keep coming in
“Canmore was a town of around 2,000 people back then,” Halprin says, “but as soon as he got his foot in door, he found a lot of people through word of mouth who needed signs. They would see some cool lettering on a window and felt they needed it too!”
The Canmore sign company became known as CanSign, which the younger Halprin now co-owns and serves as production manager, working alongside four employees and his father. Its workload includes everything from decals, vinyl banners and vehicle wraps to aluminum traffic signs, dimensional fascia signs and hand-carved Western red cedar logos.
“We avoid screenprinting today, as the chemicals are way too nasty, but we do everything else, from short runs to massive jobs,” he says. “It’s a custom shop and also a sign shop in the traditional sense.”
A lifetime of signmaking
Halprin already had a long history with the business before becoming an owner with his father. Even at 10 years old, he was weeding vinyl.
“I always loved working with my hands and being somewhat creative,” he says.
In 1989, Halprin’s father sold his signmaking equipment and began to manage a concrete business instead, though he continued to fabricate signs on weekends. In 1992, however, he got out of the concrete business and returned to the sign industry. He expanded the shop from 28 m2 (300 sf) to 84 m2 (900 sf) in 1995 and moved to the current 116-m2 (1,250-sf) location in 1996.
When Halprin was 18, he graduated from high school and began working full-time at the shop. In 2001, he moved to Vancouver, where he ran the sign division of PacBlue Printing for nearly three years. Then he returned to Canmore to help run the family business and keep it up to date by investing in newer technology.
“Dad started out using a jigsaw or scroll saw to cut sign letters,” he says. “Now we have a computer numerical control (CNC) milling machine.”
Similarly, Halprin has updated his skills over the years. In 2011, for example, he trained to become a 3M Canada-preferred graphics installer.
“It was extremely tough,” he says. “Most people who take the course only wrap vehicles, but I don’t get to be that specialized. I also have to spend time in paint booths or up in cranes installing signs! The trainers are amazing, though. I was the 34th student or so in Canada to pass the course.”
It helped that CanSign had already been using 3M’s vinyl films since 1987, when Halprin’s father started producing graphics for the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary (for which Canmore would host the Nordic skiing and biathlon events).
“Today, 95 per cent of our digitally printed and cut vinyl work uses 3M films,” says Halprin, who is currently testing the company’s EnVision film samples on a variety of surfaces.
For work in the paint booth, he has also been trained with PPG’s Matthews Paint products for signs.
“I took the course at a PPG facility in Mississauga, Ont., and the company provided phenomenal support,” he says. “We used to use a lot of sign enamel paints, but this system is easier to work with. I can now mix 75,000 colours spot-on. We signed up for their ‘gloss’ system nine years ago and we’ve since upgraded to the ‘satin’ system. We are also considering adding new paints that are low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to our quiver.”
