The sudden resurgence of the iconic Mary Maxim sweater — sparked by Ryan Gosling wearing one in the film Project Hail Mary — has people across Canada reminiscing about a classic piece of Canadiana. But in Kenora and Minaki, the excitement carries an even more personal connection.
Behind another well-known northern knitwear brand, the Minaki Sweater, was Barry Gibson — a creative force whose career spanned sweater design and advertising, music, entrepreneurship, and community building.
For Barry’s son, Kelly Gibson, the recent attention to the sweaters has brought back memories not only of the clothing itself but also of the man behind many of the original designs.
“My dad was one of the initial people starting the Mary Maxim company,” Kelly said in a recent interview with Kenora Miner & News. “He designed most of the patterns for the sweaters. The one Ryan Gosling is wearing — there’s a pretty good chance my dad designed that pattern.”
Barry Gibson joined Mary Maxim in the early 1950s, when the Manitoba company was still in its infancy. At the time, he was a young graphic artist working in Winnipeg. According to Kelly, company founder Willard McPhedrain travelled to the city in search of someone to help expand the business.
Instead of simply offering advice, Barry offered himself for the job.
“My dad basically said, ‘Forget it, I’ll be your manager,’” Kelly recalled. “That same night, he went to Willard’s hotel room and told him he wanted the job.”
The move changed everything.
Barry and his wife relocated to Sifton, Manitoba, where Mary Maxim was based. There, Barry helped transform the company into what would become one of the most recognizable knitting brands in North America.
One of his biggest contributions was redesigning the graph system used to create sweater patterns, allowing more detailed wildlife and northern imagery to be knitted into garments.
“He made breakthroughs that made it easier for knitters to make these patterns,” Kelly explained. “He’d sit in the living room surrounded by graph paper, figuring out how all the inserts and designs would work.”
At the same time, Barry began creating sweater patterns at a remarkable pace.
“He designed 55 or 60 patterns right away,” Kelly said during a Common Ground presentation in Minaki. “The company launched, and it just exploded.”
By the mid-1950s, Mary Maxim sweaters had become a cultural phenomenon. Curlers, outdoorsmen and families across Canada wore the thick wool sweaters featuring moose, wolves and geometric northern designs.
The company eventually grew so large it relocated operations to eastern Canada and later expanded into the United States. But Barry chose not to move with it.
Instead, he returned to Winnipeg, where he launched Gibson and Swenson Advertising, a successful creative agency that reflected his endless stream of ideas and artistic energy.
“He could think, draw and write copy at a really high speed,” Kelly said. “He’d go into his room in the morning and come out later with an entire campaign finished.”
Years later, after semi-retiring to Minaki, Barry found himself pulled back toward the sweater business once again.
The Gibson family had fallen in love with the area after visiting through performances by Barry’s banjo group, the Banjo Bandits. They bought a cottage, then eventually purchased nearby property and settled permanently in the community.
Not long after, Barry launched the Minaki Trading Company.
The business revived the familiar heavy-knit cardigan style Canadians associated with Mary Maxim, but with a distinctly northwestern Ontario identity. Instead of wildlife-only themes, Barry leaned heavily into Indigenous-inspired patterns and northern imagery.
“My dad stayed on the Native theme,” Kelly said. “It was semi-Native artwork and designs.”
The company also employed local residents, including Indigenous women from the area, and shipped sweater kits across Canada and the United States.
Back then, everything was handled through the mail. Orders, cash payments, customer photos and handwritten letters arrived daily at the Minaki post office.
“It was always exciting checking the mail,” Kelly laughed. “Some days lots of money came in, some days none. But people would send photos of their whole family in sweaters, even their dogs.”
Kelly says the sweaters quickly became recognizable around the region, and many are still worn today.
“If you see somebody walking around Kenora in one of those heavy knit sweaters, there’s a good chance it’s a Minaki sweater,” he said.
Even after leaving the sweater business, Barry continued creating. In Kenora, he designed logos still visible around town, played music locally, wrote humour columns and stayed deeply involved in the creative life of the community.
For Kelly, seeing renewed interest in the sweaters decades later feels both surprising and fitting.
“It’s just one of those timeless Canadian looks,” he said. “Heavy wool sweaters with northern patterns. They never really go out of style.”
And neither, it seems, did Barry Gibson’s influence.
By Pam Fedack, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on May 07, 2026 at 18:25
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