When people talk about the textile industry in Sherbrooke, they speak of the glory days of companies like Dominion Textile and Paton Manufacturing whose large red-brick buildings continue to hold a kind of majesty for the local population long after their owners closed up shop. What those people don’t realize, according to Eric Perlinger, is that the textile industry that made Sherbrooke what it is today has not completely disappeared. “This was a big textile environment originally because of hydromechanical power and later hydroelectric power,” said Perlinger, who became President of a local company called Filspec in 2015. Operating out of the former Dominion Textile plant on Burlington Street, Filspec came to be in 2004 when plant employees bought the bankrupt business from Cavalier Textiles who had, in turn, acquired it from Dominion only a few years earlier. The President did not hide from the fact that the company has gone through a rough road on the journey to reinventing itself, but said that things are now looking good thanks to a combination of innovation and a supportive economic climate. See full story in the Tuesday, June 11 edition of The Record.
“Innovative yarn solutions”: How Filspec is keeping the textiles industry alive in Sherbrooke
By Gordon Lambie
