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Note: g day preached the value of a good education to anybody who would listen. When he was young, a horse kicked him leaving his right hand permanently paralysed to the point he could not open his hand from the middle to little finger. This disability was the reason he did not see military service. Tom immigrated to Canada in 1922 landing in Montreal and working his was across Canada as a general labourer. He recalled loading train boxcars with 50kg (112lbs) sacks of coal by hand just to make enough to live on and continue moving west.
Once in the Vancouver area he worked as a construction labourer and truck driver. In the fall of 1929 he went to get a load of firewood from the hills. On his return a neighbour offered to buy the wood as he had no truck with which to haul the firewood from the hills. Tom sold him the firewood on the condition that the neighbour comes with him to get more for him. The idea came to Tom, that others might need firewood delivered for a price. Soon, a thriving business hauling wood and coal was established and Mairs Transport was born. Tom, in one capacity or another oversaw Mairs Transport for the next 55 years, building to a point where at one time (1980?) it was valued at over $5 million. Holding included a mine for decorative rock (dolomite) a fleet of large tractor-trailer trucks, warehouse and land in Mallardville and hauling contracts with a number of companies in the Vancouver area.
Tom met and married Bertha May Sims , a practical nurse at "Mental Hospital #9" which eventually became Woodlands Hospital. Together they had three children who had 14 grandchildren
By 1948 the house where Tom and Bertha lived with their three children had gotten a bit small, considering they were running the business off the kitchen table so they decided to build a new home at the corner of 7th street and 17th Avenue in Burnaby (7803-17th Ave). This became the family home until Bertha died in the 1990s.
Tom's funeral was attended by over 300 people, so speakers were set up outside to accommodate those who could not fit inside.
Note: Thomas quit school after only four years when his mother died (April 1910), yet to his dyin
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