There's a black and white photo on our homepage of a teenager working on a Mercury outboard. That's my dad, Jim Harris, in 1965. He was 18. That photo does a lot of quiet work. 1965 was the year my grandfather George signed on as a Mercury dealer, so the motor under Dad's...
Quick answer: George Harris opened Harris Boat Works on Rice Lake in 1947 and ran it for 31 years. His son Jim stepped into the owner's chair in 1978 and ran it for 37 more. Jim's son Jay runs it today. The shop became a Mercury dealer in 1965 and is a current Mercury Premier Dealer, still on the same Gores Landing dock.
There's a black and white photo on our homepage of a teenager working on a Mercury outboard. That's my dad, Jim Harris, in 1965. He was 18.
That photo does a lot of quiet work. 1965 was the year my grandfather George signed on as a Mercury dealer, so the motor under Dad's hands was one of the first Mercurys this shop ever sold. And Dad himself was born in October 1947, the same year Grandpa opened the doors. The business and the man who'd spend his whole life in it arrived together.
People ask why they should trust us with a $25,000 repower or a season of storage. The honest answer isn't a slogan. It's three men, one dock, and 79 years. This is the story we'd tell you if you walked in and asked.
George Harris (right), his son Jim at the wheel, and grandson Jay, heading out from the HBW docks in 1988.
That's the three of us above, heading out from the docks in 1988. My grandfather George on the right, my dad Jim at the wheel, and me in the very good hat. Three generations in one boat, with a Mercury on the back, at the marina one of them built and the other two would spend their lives running. Nobody was thinking about marketing that morning. We were thinking about fish.
George's Shop: 1947 to 1978
My grandfather George Harris opened the shop in 1947 on the south shore of Rice Lake. Toronto families had been coming to this lake since the late 1800s, and somebody had to launch their boats, fix their engines, build their docks, and patch their canvas. George did all of it.
George had already spent nearly two decades learning the trade. He began apprenticing at Rice Lake Boat Works in 1928 under owner Wally Pratt, building cedar-strip canoes, boats, and paddles. By the spring of 1947, opening his own shoreline shop was less a leap into a new business than the next step in a craft he'd practised since he was 20.
He was a builder before he was a dealer. Wooden boats, docks, whatever the season called for. One winter in the 1950s he built the neighbourhood kids a sled with its own makeshift steering, loaded them on, and sent them down the hill. Not everything a craftsman makes ends up with a price tag. That's the kind of shop it was. There's even an old 1950s postcard floating around that calls the place the "Harris Boat Works Snack Bar Marina," which tells you the business plan was roughly "whatever Rice Lake needs."
Through the 1950s and 60s, outboards took over from inboards and oars. Lighter, easier to service, easier to upgrade. George watched the industry shift and shifted with it. In 1965 he made the single biggest business decision in this company's history: he became a Mercury dealer.
1965: The Mercury Handshake
In 1965, Mercury was the rising power in outboards. Carl Kiekhaefer's company was building motors lighter and stronger than the competition, and George bet the shop's future on them. Sixty-one years later, that bet is still paying out. We've sold Mercury ever since, and today we hold Premier status, the top tier of Mercury's dealer program, re-earned every year on service scores.
Jim Harris, 18, working on a Mercury in 1965, the year Harris Boat Works became a Mercury dealer.
That's also the year of the homepage photo. Dad, 18 years old, sleeves rolled, learning the product line that would define his working life. He never really stopped standing at that bench.
We've stayed Mercury-only on purpose. No Yamaha, no Honda, no Suzuki. One brand, learned three generations deep. When a dealership and a manufacturer stay together this long, the customer gets the benefit: parts on the shelf, techs who've seen every generation of the product, and warranty support that doesn't require explaining who you are.
Jim's Shop: 1978 to 2015
Dad stepped into the owner's chair in 1978, with George handing him the shop. If you go digging in the federal registry you'll find Harris Boat Works incorporated in February 1978, and that date confuses people who know we started in 1947. The paperwork simply marks the handoff: the year the second generation formally took the wheel.
The handoff changed ownership, not George's connection to the craft. When the original workshop burned in 1980, he continued building to order from the basement of his home in semi-retirement until his death in November 1988. The last cedar-strip canoe he built still hangs in the main HBW building, one of the few surviving examples of his work. The longer builder's story is preserved on the official George Harris history page.
Jim Harris at his desk with a young Jay, around 1990.
That's Dad's office around 1990, with me attached to his shoulder. Look at the desk. Paper work orders, carbon copies, a calculator, and file tabs on the cabinet reading "CURRENT," "CHARGED," and "PAID." That was the entire management system, and it ran a marina for decades. The Mercury Racing shirt wasn't a costume either. He wore the brand because he believed in it.
Jim ran this place for 37 years. He steered it through 20% interest rates in 1981, the early-90s recession, 2008, and every cold spring and weedy August in between. Every long-running family business has years where somebody had to decide to keep going. Dad made that call more than once, and he made it quietly, at that desk, with the calculator.
He passed away in December 2015. The obituary said "Owner of Harris Boat Works, proud father of Jay." Both things were true, though he'd have argued the order.
Jay's Shop: 2016 to Now
I took over that winter. Third generation, and like Dad I didn't exactly apply for the job. I grew up on these docks, got told to stop running on them, and now I'm the one telling kids to stop running on them.
Each generation here overlapped the next. George worked alongside Dad; Dad worked alongside me. That's how the things that matter actually transfer, because they're not in any manual:
- Where the sunken railway sits. Rice Lake has an old submerged rail causeway, and we know exactly which line to hold and which boats find it the hard way. We've heard every grounding story since 1947.
- What the lake does in each season. When ice-out lands, which weeks the weeds peak, how the wind builds chop differently in May than in October.
- Which mistakes new boaters make. First-time pontoon owners trim wrong in predictable ways. We can teach the fix in 30 seconds because we've watched it for decades.
- What customers will actually use. The family convinced they need the 22-footer often fits the 20 better. Selling the right boat instead of the bigger invoice is why customers come back for 40 years.
The tools changed under me. Dad's paper tabs became Lightspeed. The handshake quote became a public configurator at mercuryrepower.ca where you can see real motor prices without phoning anyone. In 2026 we became what we believe is the first marine dealer live on the Universal Commerce Protocol, which means even AI shopping assistants can read our pricing. Grandpa put a snack bar in his marina because that's what the moment called for. Publishing prices on the internet is the same instinct, 75 years later: meet the customer where they are, and don't make them beg for a number.
What didn't change is the part customers actually feel. A boat comes in tired, it leaves running, and before it goes home somebody who's done this a few thousand times takes it out on Rice Lake and runs it through the gears. Nobody wrote that down as policy. It's just the only way that's ever felt right here.
The Customers Come in Generations Too
There are boats in our files whose first owners are gone, handed down to sons and daughters who grew up riding in them. They bring the boat back to the same shop because that's simply where it has always gone.
Some of our customers bought their first Mercury from George. Their kids dealt with Jim. Their grandkids deal with me. That's not a sales achievement. It's a trust relationship that took three lifetimes to build and would take about one bad season to lose, which is exactly why we don't have bad seasons on purpose.
When customers say they trust HBW, they mean specific things. They trust the diagnosis, because we've been right for a long time. They trust the price, because it's published where anyone can check the math. They trust that when we say "you don't need the bigger motor," we just talked ourselves out of money. And they trust that we'll still be here, because a business that survived 1981 interest rates on paper invoices is not going to be scared off by a slow July.
Why the Location Matters as Much as the Years
A Toronto dealer sells Mercurys. We sell Mercurys to people who'll run them on Rice Lake, the Kawarthas, and the Trent-Severn. Different job.
Rice Lake averages 6 to 10 feet deep, grows serious weed by late summer, and hides that sunken railway. Prop choice matters here. Trim habits matter here. Knowing when the walleye open in May and when the first fall haul-out gets booked matters here. A dealer who's watched this specific lake since 1947 gives different advice than a showroom off the 401, because we're not guessing what the water will do to your motor. We've already seen it.
What HBW Is Today
In 2026, the shop George opened runs as:
- Mercury Marine Premier Dealer, FourStroke and Pro XS in stock; Verado, SeaPro, and Avator by special order
- Mercury Certified Repower Centre, serving boat owners across Ontario
- Legend Boats dealer, Canadian company, designed for Canadian water
- 49 seasonal marina slips on Rice Lake
- Rental fleet of pontoons and fishing boats
- Winter storage, outdoor storage with professional shrink wrap, outdoor uncovered storage, or shrink-wrap-only service
- Service and repair, from diagnostics to full warranty work
- Public launch ramp and ethanol-free 89 marine gas at the dock
Most of our customers are repeat customers. Many are second and third generation, which around here is just called "customers."
The Fourth Generation
Our kids work the docks in the summers, the same way Dad did in the 1950s and I did in the 1980s. Whether one of them takes over someday is their call to make, not ours to force. George didn't pressure Jim, and Jim didn't pressure me; the job has a way of choosing you around here anyway.
Either way, we're not going anywhere. A motor purchase is a 10-15 year service relationship, and we plan on being on this dock for all of it.
Ready to Become a Customer Story We Tell in 2047?
If your boat needs a motor, put together a real quote with real prices at mercuryrepower.ca. If it needs work, skip the phone tree we don't have and put in a service request.
Phone: 905-342-2153
Configurator: mercuryrepower.ca
Service: hbw.wiki/service
