The History of The Drawing Centre
Founded in 1956 by George Alexander Leask
The Drawing Centre opened in 1956 as a print shop located in a garage off an alley at Bay Street & King Street in Toronto. The garage was 1,000 square feet and the business provided blueprint services to business in the downtown core. Within its first 5 years of operation it became a major provider of blue printing services in Toronto, purchasing so much diazo paper that suppliers had difficulty keeping up. Because of stock issues, the company decided to set up their own coating line so they would not have to rely on outside manufacturers. The Drawing Centre built their own coating equipment and soon manufactured so much diazo that the excess was sold to other print shops. In 1962 The Drawing Centre became a Clearprint dealer and within one year they became their largest reseller in Canada. The business grew quickly forcing a move to Racine Road in Etobicoke and the addition of a delivery fleet.
The Drawing Centre was the first company in Canada to use the Volkswagon Van for their delivery fleet.
It quickly outstripped the location at Racine Road and moved to a facility that was twice as big on Vulcan Street in Etobicoke. Around 1975 another move to 80 RoyalCrest Road was necessary. The Drawing Centre began selling Neolt Super Diazo printers, trimmers, drafting machines and tables as well as diazo products to the graphics industry. A coating machine was added to provide sepia line materials.
1979-80 a wholly owned subsidiary was set up to produce a computer aided drafting system CADAR Computer Aided Design And Research. The first computer system able to transition from manual drafting to computer based drafting was designed and manufactured by Mr. Leask working in conjunction with a company out of Ottawa. A pen plotter was also designed which was eventually sold to the design industry for mass manufacturing.
The 1980’s saw the introduction of water based ink jet printers to which The Drawing Centre was authorized by Encad to sell their printers. Today The Drawing Center is still Canadian company owned & operated by the same family, now in the 3rd generation and located at 1821 Albion Road #1-2 in Etobicoke.
