Seasonal ‘happy place’ Christmas Light Guys installations have helped illuminate Winnipeg for quarter-century Made in Manitoba
By: Aaron Epp Posted: 5:59 PM CST Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024 Last Modified: 7:41 PM CST Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024 Updates

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Twenty-five years ago, Charles Wiebe had a lightbulb moment — and he’s had thousands more since.

The 47-year-old is the co-founder and owner of the Christmas Light Guys, one of Winnipeg’s first professional holiday light installation services. Every holiday season, the company installs lights on 600 to 700 residential and commercial properties in and around the Manitoba capital.

Wiebe enjoys the seasonal nature of the work.

“It can get a little chaotic, but I like knowing that it’s not going to go on perpetually,” he says. “It means I have a little bit of downtime in the winter to spend with my family.

“And ultimately I enjoy the lights, too. It’s just fun to do a bigger project and then be able to drive down the streets, see your work and know that our company did it.”

Wiebe was a student at Red River College Polytech in 1999, when he and a friend started brainstorming ways to make extra cash in their spare time. They wanted to start a business catering to homeowners and hanging Christmas lights seemed like a bright idea.

“We thought there’s people who probably want to enjoy the holidays and have lights up, but installing lights isn’t actually the easiest of tasks,” Wiebe says. “You have the cold, you’ve got the heights, you’ve got ladders — all kinds of barriers to actually getting that type of work done.”

“It’s just fun to do a bigger project and then be able to drive down the streets, see your work and know that our company did it.”–Charles Wiebe

The pair put the word out and hung lights on about a dozen homes that year. They had no money, so they borrowed a van and a ladder. They used a swimming pool-cleaning pole with a hanger attached to it to drape lights on trees.

“The responses that we got from people when we were meeting them for quotes was, ‘I didn’t know this service existed,’” Wiebe recalls. “So that was the response — that’s how early we got into it.

“We had no idea what we were doing,” he adds. “It was 100 per cent makeshift.”

Still, Wiebe felt they were onto something. His friend left the business the following year; Wiebe has kept it going ever since.

Today, the company employs about 20 people during its peak season.

Headquartered in a 5,200-square-foot shop south of Winnipeg, in the unincorporated community of Grande Pointe, the company offers a variety of services, including seasonal and permanent installations. It works with budgets of all sizes, with jobs starting at $750.

Wiebe has had an entrepreneurial drive since he was a child growing up in the southern Manitoba town of Altona. He remembers being eight or nine years old and going door-to-door selling his lawn mowing services and vegetables he’d pulled out of his mother’s garden.

“I always had an affinity for business,” he says. “It’s kind of fun looking back and seeing, oh yeah — that was just kind of built in.”

In 2000, Wiebe graduated from RRC Polytech with a diploma in business administration. He had a decision to make: he could take a job in marketing or finance or he could chase his entrepreneurial dream. He chose the latter (and the ladder).

He calls 2000 the company’s first official year of business. He bought equipment and took on about 30 jobs that year, doing most of the work himself. Friends and family members helped on a casual basis. At 6-6, Wiebe got used to customers asking him: “Do you even need a ladder?”

“It was kind of chaotic because (I was) doing all the jobs,” he says. “Answering the phone, booking estimates, going in the evenings to look at properties, going out to Canadian Tire to buy lights in the evening, going out during the day to install — and that pattern over and over until Christmas, when things settle down.”

Wiebe is thankful now he can hire dedicated salespeople and installers. His wife of 17 years, Sharenda, is the company’s controller; their teenaged sons, Smith and Liam, help out in the shop from time to time.

“For me, this is Christmas: having my Christmas lights up and the decorations.”–Gail Graham

Additionally, Wiebe owns and operates Lights Depot, a distributor of durable, professional-grade holiday lighting built for the cold weather of Canadian winters, and Tree Ninjas, a tree removal service.

The Christmas Light Guys is Wiebe’s biggest venture, though. The company does jobs of all sizes, from small bungalows to commercial properties with multiple buildings and trees.

The company makes a big difference to Gail Graham, a St. Vital resident who has hired the Christmas Light Guys annually since 2002. Wiebe’s employees hang lights on the octogenarian’s house and the 40-foot-tall spruce tree that stands in her yard.

“I don’t have family here (and) I’m not married,” Graham says. “For me, this is Christmas: having my Christmas lights up and the decorations.”

The company installs Graham’s lights around Thanksgiving and she flips the switch for the first time on the weekend of the local Santa Claus parade.

“With all the stuff going on in this world, I think it puts a positive spin on things,” she says. “It makes it a happy place. You get that happy, cheerful feeling.”

The company also counts the Manitoba Métis Federation among its clients.

Wiebe and his crew string hundreds of lights around the pillars in front of the federation’s headquarters in the old Bank of Montreal building downtown, making their efforts visible to anyone travelling through the iconic Portage and Main intersection.

Wiebe takes pride in his work and wants to deliver quality service to his customers, regardless of how big or small the job is. He believes the Christmas Light Guys contribute to the festive spirit in Winnipeg during the holidays.

“No matter what your beliefs are, if you celebrate Christmas or not, how can you not enjoy driving around and seeing the city well-illuminated?” he says. “It just is kind of a Christmas light city, so it’s fun being a part of that.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca