Our Story

In 1895, a cabinet maker named John Leeming Bradshaw bought the stock of a china shop on Ontario Street with every intention of clearing it out and getting back to making furniture.

Four months later he gave up the furniture business entirely. He had discovered he liked selling china rather too much.

Bradshaws has been trading in downtown Stratford ever since — one of the oldest continuously operated independent retail stores in Canada, and now in the hands of the sixth generation of Stratford families to run it.

The man who crossed the Atlantic 87 times

J.L. Bradshaw came to Canada from Lancashire at thirteen years old. He trained as a cabinet maker and opened a furniture and undertaking business in Stratford at twenty-one. Then Peter Watson died, his China Hall came up for sale, and everything changed.

By 1900 J.L. was buying Staffordshire china directly from English and European manufacturers and wholesaling it to shops across the country. He became Canada's largest importer of Limoges tableware.

He also became slightly notorious for how far he would go to buy well. Through the First World War he was the only chinaware dealer in the Americas who kept making his annual buying trips overseas — across U-boat infested waters, every year, without missing one. Between 1896 and 1937 he is reckoned to have crossed the Atlantic eighty-seven times.

That is the origin of “buy it once and buy it well”. It was never a slogan. It was a description of how the man worked.

Six generations

J.L. ran the shop until he died in 1942. His son Harold took over for twenty-three years — and that same year Harold's own son David started work in the family shop as a student, for two dollars a week. David took over properly in 1961, aged twenty.

In 1975 the retail business passed out of the Bradshaw family to Bill Wreford and his father Gordon. Bill had started nine years earlier as a travelling salesman for the wholesale side. He was twenty-eight when he bought the shop, and he kept the Bradshaws name, because by then it belonged to the town as much as to anyone.

Bill and Sharon Wreford ran Bradshaws through its hundredth anniversary in 1995. In 2006 they retired and their son Jeremy, with his wife Carrie, took it on — the third generation of Wrefords, and the sixth generation of Stratford families to stand behind this counter.

Carrying china across the road

In 1984 the shop moved to its present home at 129 Ontario Street, across the street from where it had been.

Rather than hire movers, Bill Wreford made a donation to Knox Church, and the congregation turned out to carry the stock across the road by hand — one piece of china, one piece of crystal at a time. No packing boxes, and far less breakage than a moving van would have managed.

It is a fair summary of how this shop has always operated: carefully, and with the town's help.

What you'll find here

Our kitchen department carries cookware, knives, bakeware and gourmet food for both the home cook and the professional chef. Beyond the kitchen there is tableware and glassware, home décor, candles and fragrance, textiles, and gifts for men, women and children.

We also run a wedding and gift registry, in person, with staff who will walk you through the whole store.

We still seek out the best value we can find in quality and price, from brands that lead in their field — some of whom we have worked with for more than twenty years. And we would still rather help you buy one thing that lasts than sell you the same thing three times.

Recognised, occasionally

Bradshaws won the Canadian Gift and Tableware Retail Excellence Award in 1978, and a giaCanada Global Innovation Award for 2023–2024, presented in Chicago.

Come and see us

There is more here than a website can hold — which, after a hundred and thirty years, is rather the point. Find our hours and directions, or call us on 519-271-6283.

If you have a story about Bradshaws we don't know, we would genuinely like to hear it — info@bradshawscanada.com.