As one of the Greater Toronto Area’s most trusted hardscaping and landscaping supply leaders, Beaver Valley Stone of Markham, Ontario provides the market with on-trend and traditional arrays of products. Its selection is so vast that if this team cannot source something on behalf of a designer, contractor, or end user, it is either unavailable or unobtainable.
Beaver Valley Stone welcomed its first customers in Thornhill, Ontario in 1989. In the more than three decades in the industry since, it has built a reputation for dependability and resourcefulness, and an almost endless selection of products. As a result of the company’s commitment to continuous improvement and generous inventory, its growth continues climbing upward.
The company has established itself as a legacy business with superior service, variety, and, perhaps most significantly, volume driven by its manufacturing facility in Vaughan, Ontario. “If you cannot find it [here], we will get it for you,” says Marketing and Advertising Manager, Tania Pacitto. “My dad’s philosophy was always, ‘Put more in the yard. That way you will get more customers.’”
As a proud member of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association and Landscape Ontario since the founding days, Beaver Valley Stone provides its customers with tremendous value on several levels. Its close relationships with its clients have helped establish the company as one of Canada’s favourite landscaping suppliers to the public as well as the construction and retail industries. Its quality selection includes natural and precast landscaping components, plus home building exterior hardscape supplies like wet-cast patio slabs manufactured onsite.
The company was a pioneer in creating real-life display areas where contractors could share the visual appeal and performance of products with potential customers. These displays allow the team to illustrate how beautifully the signature look of natural stone and concrete products works indoors and outdoors.
As the team prides itself on combining natural stone with precast concrete and interspersing landscaping alongside hardscaping components, ensuring that it always has the best selection available is a matter of pride. For this reason, the company buys stock from across the globe, with natural stone entering its depot from Asia, Europe, and beyond.
It is evident that a great passion for the industry is afoot here. Beaver Valley Stone further serves its local communities by supplying road salt and other snow-season essentials like user-friendly ice-melters and similar products from around December to March. In these cold months, the company stays open 24 hours, working three shifts daily to help keep people safe while navigating icy roads and sidewalks.
Beaver Valley Stone’s story is one of vision, grit, and patience. What started with a single truckload of rockery stone—a childhood day that Tania Pacitto still recalls—has led to creating years of great memories and unimagined success. As to what spurred the decision to start the business, Tony had decided to act on a hunch, little knowing that nearly 40 years later, it would be a thriving business.
General Manager, Tino Cimone was part of the team from the first day. “We kept on going, keeping people happy and trying to serve them the best way we could, and we got our first 35 years from one truckload of stone. From [that one delivery] we got, maybe, thousands of truckloads of stone,” he says with a smile.
As the business grew, Tony Pacitto continued increasing the original facility’s footprint to over 12 acres. Following the advent of residential and commercial property developments in the area, he decided it was time to move the industrial outfit to a new site. Its 20-acre Markham facility opened in 2016, while the company also retained a smaller, five-acre parcel of land close to its original spot. From its small beginnings, the company developed a tradition of pitching in where assistance is needed most instead of rigidly sticking to specific job descriptions.
The Pacitto kids along with Hazel, Tony’s wife, even helped to set up the original shop—a renovated house—by painting and helping to install the first counter after school and on weekends, learning their family’s incredible work ethic and values along the way. Today, the tradition of rolling one’s sleeves up everywhere that help is needed persists. “You tend to do a little bit more than just one thing here at Beaver Valley. It’s always been that way. It works well for us,” Tania Pacitto says.
Beaver Valley Stone’s team of over 100 people includes its independent contributors, many of whom have been with the company for more than 10 years. “It has that family vibe to it. You feel like you are part of the family after a while,” says Manager, Joe Ponte. In the same way, staff members’ lives and families are considered hugely important, making the company’s management team flexible and accommodating.
The result is a happy workforce that is loyal to the business. In addition, its team is a true powerhouse of diversity comprising people from all over the world—much like its product selection. Whether one mentions Russia, Ukraine, Korea, South Africa, South America, and beyond, chances are that somebody on the staff is from there.
“If you can do the job, you can work with us,” says Tony Pacitto. This open-minded approach has led to a high-functioning team that brings great depth to its approach to business, which can be a rare find.
This openness also informs the company’s drive to give back to its community. The company is a regular donor to a breadth of charitable causes, including local organizations working in aid of child protection and wellness, law enforcement and civil service charity drives for fire departments, local schools for events and outdoor spaces, local hospitals and hospice centers, and many others. Last year, Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital’s Minor Treatment Unit in its Magna Emergency Department received a donation of $1 million from the Pacitto family and Beaver Valley Stone—a token of the appreciation they have for the community’s support over the years. “If I can give to help, I will,” says Tony Pacitto.
In the end, Beaver Valley Stone is about people, and it has touched and enriched the lives of tens of thousands of them through its quality products, its good service, and its commercial and charitable support. It stands to reason that, in many places, the company has become a household name thanks to its sense of family and community, and that drives the business to do even better.
With this in mind, the company also continues to stay abreast of and invest in the latest technology, especially in the ever-evolving hardscaping division. “We are pretty heavily invested in equipment for the hardscape industry,” says Joe. “We are always on top of those trends, and we bring in whatever will make our customers’ lives easier.”
Post-COVID, when people increasingly spend time working from home, creating outdoor sanctuaries to bask in calm, natural surroundings has become more than just another fad. It can support healthy lifestyles and, in many ways, physical and mental health. With this in mind, Beaver Valley Stone looks forward to a bright, happy, and healthy future.
