Woodbridge man has been a mason for 64 years

YorkRegion.com
Feb. 4, 2016
Adam Martin-Robbins

Ferdinando Andreetta has been plying his trade as a mason for more than six decades and though he’s almost 80, there’s little else he’d rather be doing.

“I can’t stay home. If I stay at home, I’ll go crazy,” said the 78-year-old Woodbridge resident, his Italian accent still thick after living in Canada for 60 years.

Andreetta was born in 1937 and grew up in Oderzo, a small town just outside Venice. 
At 14, he started laying bricks, earning about 90 cents an hour.

In his late teens, Andreetta immigrated to Canada to join his brother, Giorgio, who was here working as a mason.

Andreetta landed a job at Gottardo Masonry and worked there for about four years.

Then, in his mid-20s, he founded a company, with two partners, building homes — many of them in the Wasaga Beach and Collingwood areas.

In the spring of 1964, Andreetta got married and settled in North York.

In November of that same year the couple’s first son, Steven, was born.

Two years later, their second son, Jack, entered the world followed, in 1979, by their third son, Daniel.

A year later, the family moved to Woodbridge.

After one of his business partners passed away and the other moved back to Italy, Ferdinando decided to shutter the firm and go to work for another company, Steven said.

In 1988, his wife, Grace, passed away.

The following year, Ferdinando and Steven decided to go into business together. They founded Stefcon Construction Inc., headquartered on Edgeley Boulevard in Concord. Though Ferdinando has an office there, he seldom uses it as he much prefers being outside.

“He’ll come in at the end of the day and spend maybe 15, 20 minutes there and out the door he goes,” Steven said.

Steven managed, at one point, to persuade his dad to spend a little more time helping out in the office, but he didn’t last very long.

“He tried it for two months and it wasn’t for him.” Steven explained. “He said, ‘Sorry Steve, I’ve gotta go out, give me a job.’ He couldn’t take it.”

Ferdinando still regularly works six days a week.

“He looks forward to going to work every single day,” Steven said. “He’s 78 now and every single Saturday he still gives me a call, or Friday night when he gets back to the office, and says ‘What are we doing tomorrow? Are we going out?’”

He also takes a great deal of pleasure in mentoring young masons who show promise.

“The one thing he does enjoy is when he sees a young person with talent coming up,” Steven said. “Honestly, these days, there aren’t too many out there coming up, but he finds one every few years that he loves to train and keeps them at his side to give them his experience in the trade.”

Ferdinando still oversees the company’s large, more challenging projects.

“We have seven other foremen, but my critical ones that are most difficult or complicated, he’s the one that will be on them,” Steven said. “And if he’s supposed to go away on vacation, he won’t go. He’s really dedicated to his job and to the project and, at the end of the day, he loves seeing things built.”

He’s certainly helped build many facilities in Vaughan including city hall, the Pierre Berton Library, the Civic Centre Resource library, Kleinburg Public School and St. Jean de Brebeuf Catholic High School.

But the most challenging project of his career to date, Ferdinando said, was a major addition to Havergal College, a girl’s private school in Toronto.

What made it so challenging was that the new section had to match the original heritage building.

“It’s very tough to match something that is so beautiful, (done) in the old-style,” he said.

Over his lengthy career, Ferdinando has garnered numerous accolades, including a Golden Trowel.

But, he, said, “the best day in my life” came in 2012 when Stefcon won six awards at the Ontario Masonry Design Awards including an architectural design award for Kleinburg Public School, a structural design award for St. Jean de Brebeuf High School and an architectural design award for Pierre Berton library. 

Given all that, one might think he’d be ready to hang it up, but that’s not the case.

Asked when he might retire, Ferdinando said:
“I don’t know yet. I say all the time, ‘This is the last job.’ And after, when I finish (the job), I ask my son: ‘You got another job for me?’”