Gear gurus When it comes to racking it, trio of sports equipment wizards can get you sorted By: David Sanderson Posted: 6:00 AM CST Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026

OAKBANK — The winter-sports season is in full swing and a father-and-sons team is doing its utmost to ensure that Manitobans’ cold-weather equipment gets stored properly when it’s not in use.

Vince DePaulo and his sons Ronan, 18, and Owen, 16, are the “3” behind 3 Ideas Canada, an Oakbank-based enterprise that markets innovative, wall-mounted storage racks for ice-fishing rods, cross-country skis and hockey or ringette sticks, for home or commercial purposes.

Last fall, Ronan, who, like his dad and brother, is recognized by the province as a master angler, was fishing at Crowduck Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park when he noticed there was a new message on his phone. He waited until he was back on shore to return the call, and became excited to learn the voice at the other end was connected to the Winnipeg Jets’ Jets Gear retail outlets.

“He told me he was interested in our hockey-stick holders for displaying game-used sticks in their stores,” Ronan says, seated next to his father and brother in the dining room of their two-storey abode. “He wanted to know which of our racks held the most sticks and when I told him about our 51-inch model, which holds 14 regular sticks and two goalie sticks, he said, great, he’d take three. I remember getting off the phone and going ‘Wow, I just made a sale to the Jets!’”

Vince, a 24-year member of the Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Service, grew up north of Lockport. His grandfather and father were both “Mr. Fixits” and by the time he was 12, he, too, was repairing everything he could get his hands on, including boats, snowmobiles and hot rods. It became readily apparent the apples didn’t fall far from the tree after he and his wife Allie had kids of their own.

“I remember getting off the phone and going ‘Wow, I just made a sale to the Jets!’”

Ronan was 11 when he taught himself how to use a scroll saw to craft customized wood signs aimed at the cottage-country crowd. Around the same time, Owen, still in Grade 5, was making his own fishing lures, which he was turning around and selling to kids in the neighbourhood. Six years ago, when the brothers were 12 and 10 respectively, they entered a Dragons’ Den-style competition as part of Oakbank’s annual Chickendaze Festival. Their ventures were well-received by the judges, prompting Vince to contemplate projects the three of them could tackle as one.

“I fully admit that part of it was me being selfish,” Vince states, reaching over to pet pooch Guinness, a chocolate Labrador that along with a French bulldog named Murphy round out the family. “It was already starting to seem like they were growing up too fast, so I thought maybe if we did something together I’d be able to hang onto these guys a little longer.”

Ronan details how a fishing-rod holder turned out to be one of the first apparatuses they built under the 3 Ideas Canada banner. He was chopping firewood four summers ago outside their cottage at Big Whiteshell Lake when an errant block of timber went crashing into their existing rod holder, shattering it into “a million pieces.” Hmm, he thought as he was sweeping up the fragments, surely they could fashion something more resilient than that.

It was Vince, who’s also a certified welder, who came up with their dual-rack design, which features angled slots on the top half to make it easy to slide rods in and out, and corresponding grooves on the lower section to provide stability. The recycled-plastic units, which attach to a wall vertically or horizontally and can accommodate as many as eight rods, were a hit with the fishing community when they showed them off for the first time at an ice-fishing convention held at Red River Exhibition Place in November 2023.

Vince laughs when he is asked to whom the holders appealed more that weekend — the fishers or the neatnik in the household?

“The bulk of our sales were to people who have nice things and wanted to take care of them but for sure, we also heard from those who were tired of tripping over their partner’s stuff all the time,” he says, winking at his wife who was passing through the room to fetch a glass of water.

A few months after adding similarly-constructed hockey-stick holders made out of aluminum and plastic to their arsenal, Vince, as part of his firefighting duties, was helping conduct an inspection at the Seven Oaks Sports Plex on Kingsbury Avenue, home to two National Hockey League-sized rinks. He and his partner were being led around by Steven Nickels, the facility’s operations manager, when they entered a bench area where practising players’ spare sticks were strewn here and there.

Admitting he’s not the world’s best salesperson — plus feeling it would have been wrong to conduct personal business during his shift — Vince says he shook his head “no” when his partner started talking to Nickels about 3 Ideas Canada.

“His colleague kept nudging him but Vince said it wasn’t the right time and that he didn’t want to impose,” Nickels says when reached at his office. “He then came in on one of his days off with a demo of the stick holder and I was very intrigued. After a lot of thought, I brought it to our board to discuss.”

Nickels’ associates got their first look at the DePaulos’ Rink Rails, as they’re billed, a few weeks later when Vince and his sons were registered vendors at a hockey-themed pop-up sale staged at the adjacent Garden City Community Centre.

“That’s when we decided to try them in our players’ benches, and set up a time for Vince and one of his sons to come install them,” Nickels continues. “They’re a great product that I can tell will stand up to the level of abuse things like those receive.” (Besides Seven Oaks, 3 Ideas Canada’s hockey-stick racks are in a number of other rinks in the province, including the Hazelridge Sports Complex in Cooks Creek.)

The DePaulos presently build their patent-pending holders with the assistance of two local companies. Laird Plastics in Winnipeg supplies the plastic parts based on Vince’s specifications while Ridgeland Manufacturing in Anola laser-cuts the metal components. The guys then polish and assemble everything in their garage.

“We all have our roles,” Vince says. “I’m the main designer while Ronan, who’s also involved in the manufacturing process, would be our lead salesperson. Owen handles almost all of our social media. If you go to our Instagram page (instagram.com/3ideascanada) pretty much every video you see was edited by him and strung together with music.”

Owen, currently a student at Springfield Collegiate, and Ronan, who graduated from Collège Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau last June and is planning to study business administration at university in September, agree that running a business of their own has definitely come in handy in regard to their studies. Ronan cites a Grade 12 assignment that tasked him and his classmates with creating a hypothetical business, right down to projected sales figures. Little surprise, he received an A-plus.

“I had to take public speaking last year as part of a course and my teacher was like, ‘Why are you so good at this?’” Owen pipes in. “I told him it was because I was used to speaking in front of crowds, from all the shows we’ve done the last few years.”

Their father says 3 Ideas Canada has also taught his sons lessons one doesn’t necessarily learn at school.

“How to shake hands properly, making sure to look people in the eye when they’re talking to you, listening when somebody asks you a question… stuff that doesn’t sound overly complicated but, unfortunately, has been lost in a lot of our youth.”

“I had to take public speaking last year as part of a course and my teacher was like, ‘Why are you so good at this?’”

By the way, if you’ve ever been the parent of a teenager and are wondering if the brothers’ sense of order extends to their bedrooms, well, take a guess.

“Even though we’re focused on making such organizational tools our rooms tend to be quite messy,” Ronan admits with a chuckle. “I guess laundry is one of those things that’s hard to keep on top of.”

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