Leonard Lee, founder and longtime CEO of Lee Valley, the Canadian retailer of tools and hardware, who also launched and led Veritas, Lee Valley’s in-house manufacturer of innovative woodworking tools, died last week at the age of 78.

The company Lee started in his home as a mail-order seller of wood stoves in 1977 (with assembly and shipping help from his wife and 15-year old son) quickly became one of the most trusted suppliers of woodworking tools and equipment in North America, and grew over the years into a strapping corporation with 850 employees, a woodworking catalogue mailed to 1.2 million people around the world, 17 retail stores across Canada, and more than $100 million in annual revenue.

Given the size and success of Lee Valley, you might expect its founder to have been an inaccessible figure. That would not have been Leonard Lee; he never walled himself off in the executive suite. Although he had a background in business, having worked in the Department of Trade and Finance for the Canadian government, he built his company on personal relations and on his passion for tools and tinkering.

Pull a Veritas joinery saw from its package and you’ll be holding a sweet tool that sells for a modest price. But you’ll also be holding a kind of key to Leonard Lee’s philosophy of toolmaking: to blend innovation with tradition in tools that deliver flair, utility, and thrift.

When I learned that Lee had died, I remembered a story I heard some years ago from Paul Ruhlmann, a shop teacher at a school outside Boston. One day in 1998, Ruhlmann called Lee Valley out of the blue and asked to speak to Leonard Lee. In a moment Lee was on the line and when Ruhlmann, who had never invented anything before, said he had an idea for a tool that would fit in your hand drill and cut round tenons, Lee said, “Come on up and show it to me.”

Ruhlmann made the 8-hour drive to Ottawa and Lee welcomed him right into his office. For the first hour, Ruhlmann remembers, “nobody was talking business.” Over coffee, Lee told Ruhlmann about his prairie upbringing as one of three brothers on a rocky farm without electricity in Saskatchewan. He described being trained as a pilot in the Canadian air force and later working for the government until the red tape left him “desperate to get out.” Then he asked Ruhlmann about himself. Eventually Lee turned the talk to tools. “Well, you came up to show me your idea-let’s have a look at it.”

Ruhlmann brought out the prototype tenon cutter he’d made: a block of wood with a tapered hole drilled in it and a curved blade that functioned like a giant pencil sharpener. Lee instantly said, “Stanley made a tool like this in 1904. But it had a straight blade. This curved blade is an elegant idea.” Lee took Ruhlmann right to the shop to try out the tool himself, first on some green branches and then on a hickory hammer handle. Thrilled with the results, Lee said, “This is brilliant! We’re going to make these!” Right on the spot Lee wrote a royalty agreement. Lee expected there would be a market for the tool, but he was surprised at how strong it was. In the years since, Lee Valley has sold tens of thousands of Veritas tenon cutters.

Veritas may not be the most profitable part of Lee Valley, but it’s had an enormous impact on the woodworking field. It continues to design and produce some of the most coveted tools on the market, and the example it set was certainly a primary catalyst of the current revival of fine hand tools made by small companies.

By the time I met Lee, in 2012, when I visited Ottawa to write about Lee Valley as it turned 35, he had long since retired as CEO of the company, having stepped down at 65 in favor of his son, Robin. But he had never stopped soliciting and developing ideas for new tools, some for Lee Valley and others for Canica, a company he founded in 1998 to design and produce medical tools and equipment.

I found him forthright, engaging, flinty, and full of enthusiasm for various tools he’d recently had a hand in acquiring or developing, including bench pups and “sidewinder” pliers with offset jaws. As Rick Blaiklock, director of R&D at Veritas, said of Lee, “To me, his biggest talent is that he’s always thinking, ‘What are the problems I have in the shop, in the garden, in the kitchen, around the house-and how can I solve them?’ That leads to tools he needs-and they’ve been key to the success of Lee Valley.”

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