In the depression, the Fillion brothers scrape together a living for their mother by taking scrap wood from the docks and selling it door-to-door as firewood. From this humble start, they develop their business: building first highchairs and selling them, then building and suplying Adirondack chairs to a local furniture store. As a market develops for their work in the years after the Second World War, they open their own furniture store, expand it and, over the course of the next thirty years, become successful merchants. Louis, the middle brother, is the leader of the family.