1962 | M+K, which stands for Marysville & Kimberley, opens its doors in a small building (which still stands today!) on the main street of Marysville, British Columbia.
The company was originally created by Bill Hryciuk, a Kimberley Dynamiters, Junior “B” hockey player and natural entrepreneur. After almost 20 years, the company moved to Cranbrook after it outgrew its original stomping grounds.
1987 | Ed & John Zirk, a father and son team, purchase M+K.
They started as a small team of 4 — including themselves and the original owner, Bill — and worked to grow the company to 10 employees. In 1995, John and his wife Cindy bought out Ed’s shares so that he could retire.
The company flourished over the next 20 years under John & Cindy’s leadership, becoming the East Kootenay’s largest mechanical company. During this time, the Zirks expanded the business to include sprinkler systems, air conditioning, and engineering.
2006 | M+K outgrows its original Cranbrook location on 7th Avenue, and moves to its current location on Slater Rd.
2012 | Roy Needham moves his family to the area to join his sister and brother-in-law in the company.
2015 | A natural synergy between Roy Needham & Jim Larson — who had already been working for M+K for 8 years at the time —leads to a new partnership.
As the Zirks set out to retire, Roy and Jim were honoured to carry the torch of M+K’s long history forward into future projects and an evolving vision.
We are committed:
To building long-term working relationships
To continually providing experienced, dedicated and customer focused tradespeople
To providing up front, honest answers and solutions throughout your project
To consistently delivering quality services & products
To promote continuous learning and training for a safety-first culture
ROY NEEDHAM, owner
Roy’s philosophy and work ethic distills to two core values: 1) Take pride in what you do and what you put out there —and make sure you do it well. 2) Life is about balance: if you work hard, you’d better play hard too! Balance for Roy means getting outside as often as possible. He’s passionate about motosports, snowboarding, camping, and everything in between — and he even secretly loves the meditation of chopping wood and mowing the lawn.
While he likely didn’t think of sheet metal as a career at the young age of 17, Roy’s journey to where he is today began in 1989 when his sister Cindy and brother-in-law John offered him an apprenticeship with M+K. Studies for his apprenticeship led him to Calgary, where he ended up staying for 20 years. Always on the go and hungry for new experiences, Roy found that opportunities came one after the next. As a journeyman, he filled the role of head foreman on countless job sites, successfully ran his own mechanical company for 6 years, and was the HVAC inspector for the City of Calgary and the contract administrator for one of the city’s top LEED Engineering companies.
Roy is happy to be back in Kimberley where he grew up. The mountains, clean air, and wide open spaces are what keep him grounded — it’s home. Today he clearly sees that he needed to leave the Kootnay’s in order to prepare to step into the role and responsibility he jointly carries today. It’s a full circle moment as he looks back to where he started: the very journeyman Roy apprenticed under for his first 2 years was no other than M+K’s founder Bill Hryciuk. The one thing that remains from his early teachings alongside Bill are the words that have driven him daily for the last 30 years: “Do a great job, make sure you’re proud of what you leave behind.”
JIM LARSON, owner
Jim is a dreamer. He calls them hair brained schemes, but his knack for recognizing opportunities brings a spontaneous and dynamic energy to M+K’s team. He has a natural ability to build relationships and, with his high level of integrity, his word means everything.
Jim likes to get things done. From a young age, he knew he wasn’t going to be a desk jockey. He wanted to work with his hands: he went straight into trades school in 1993, and was working as a sheet metal journeyman by 1996. On his first day, he proudly slipped into his Carhart overalls and was sent to dig ditches ahead of the plumbers laying pipe. This was the day Jim pioneered the term “sprint digging”! He didn’t really like digging ditches, so he went as fast as he could to get it over with. This backfired, because he became the best ditch digger in town and was sent to dig ditches for every job. And to this day, if a ditch needs to dug, or a large, complex project needs to be managed, with Jim at the helm you can count on it getting done! With precision, passion and, of course, speed!
After his humble beginnings digging ditches, Jim spent 10 years at a top-level mechanical company in the Okanagan. But in 2006, the mountains were calling. A lover of the outdoors and the rugged mountains, Jim and his family moved to Cranbrook in 2006 for a fresh start, and he is now a proud co-owner of M&K.
