One family's great marketing sense

Illustration: Michael Em

The corncob pipe market was a difficult way to make a buck until Montrealer David Zabitsky came up with a brilliant innovation. Add a second stem on it so you can smoke at the same time with someone else. This invention from 1968 pretty much gave him a lock on romantically-inclined double-stemmed corncob pipe buyers. He even gave it a really catchy name, "the two-can-smoke-as-cheap-as-one pipe."
  A patrilineal namesake called Sonny Zabitsky was also a very clever marketer, cornering the market on Sony Beta VCRs in the mid-80s just when everybody else thought they were going bust.
  There was also a Montreal Zabitsky inhabiting this structure in the 1940s, which is soon to be demolished. The Griff might have some sentimental value but even at the best of times, this was one isolated house surrounded by industrial neighbours.