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In 1958 W.D. Rice, who had been in the granite business for many years in Nova Scotia assisted his son, Rod, in the formation of a memorial company in the present location at 1421 Highway No.8 in Winona, Ontario. Rod operated the business for twenty-three years, building a good reputation for locally made memorials that can be seen in many of the area cemeteries.
In 1981 he sold the business to James and Jennifer Scott, a local couple determined to continue the tradition of quality and value that Rod had established. The Scotts were joined from the beginning by their son Andrew, and Rod trained both Jimmy and Andrew in the intricacies of the sandblasting process used on most granite monuments. Andrew learned how to do the hand tooling that is used to customize some of the lettering and design work.
To augment his income, Andrew bought a small cemetery and lettering business that specialized in adding names and dates to memorials that had previously been installed in the local cemeteries. It was here that he honed his craft and became an expert in the styles of hand tooling work. After a few years of work for both his parents and himself he was needed full time at the Rice Monuments and gave up the small side business.
In 1998, Jim and Jennifer Scott sold the business to their son Andrew, confident that he was well qualified to carry on the tradition of the business. Andrew has continued to grow the business, adding new innovative designs and lines of granite from many parts of the world with the emphasis on hand work on the more specialized pieces.
Over the years, computers entered the memorial design picture with the standardized design cut stencils. Styles changed with more emphasis being placed on personalizing memorials. Etched scenes and portraits became preferred to the former three dimensional religious and floral carving works of the past. Although, that type of beautiful decoration in still frequently used. Rice Monuments has hired a number of notable artists over the years, including Kestas Keparutis, and most Recently Paul Kennedy. Kennedy was added to the staff to assist in the custom layouts that Rice Monument Works prefers to use for much of it's work rather than the computerized stencils.
Over the past eight years Mary TeVelthuis has assisted, Andrew Scott, with running the office and the sales departments, giving sympathetic and knowledgeable advice to those looking for meaningful memorials for their loved ones. she is able to show customers a wide variety of sizes and styles in the well stocked indoor and outdoor showrooms, along with a variety of bronze lamps and vases and many other decorative additions that can be added to personalize a cemetery memorial. The company also carries a line of bronze suitable for flat marker memorials and historical signs.
The year 2008 will mark the Fiftieth Anniversary of the well known memorial company. starting with W.D. Rice & Son, then Rice Monuments, and now Rice Monument Works. Andrew Scott is proud to continue the tradition of offering personalized memorials, finished locally, and made from the finest granites from Canada and around the world.