Our Founder

Otto Jangl was born into a farming family in Czechoslovakia on December 19, 1924, and was raised on the land. He finished high school in 1943, under German occupation. Forced labour was the rule at the time, and he was taken to a German labour camp, where he spent a year and a half. Only once the war was over could he begin university.

The escape

He graduated in 1947 as an agricultural engineer from Charles University in Prague. He had been active in student politics, opposing the communists, and when he was called up for compulsory military service his views were quickly known. He was demoted and put to work in a kitchen. A friend, a sergeant, warned him he was about to be indicted. With two fellow soldiers, he escaped on foot across the border into Germany. It was a harrowing crossing, and by luck they made it, reaching a camp for political refugees. He waited there a year and a half. Emigration to Canada as a farm worker was the only door open to him, so he took it.

A new country

He arrived in 1950 with almost nothing and went to work on a farm south of Montréal. By 1953 he was renting a farm of his own and was deep in the cleaning and production of agricultural seed; in 1956 he bought his neighbour’s farm.

He also worked at the Vincelli garden centre, and it was his own idea that they begin selling to golf courses — sand, soil, and grass seed he bought from Pilar Seed and sold on to the superintendents.

1967 — O.J. Compagnie

After Expo 67, Otto left the garden centre and went out on his own, founding O.J. Compagnie to buy and sell seed to golf courses. That same year he passed the required exams at Université Laval and was admitted to Québec’s Ordre des agronomes; the agronomist he had always been, finally recognized in his adopted country.

The company was Otto, a truck, and a driver named Willy. He drove to the clubs himself to offer seed, fertilizer, chemicals and consulting, at a time when there were only one hundred golf courses in all of Québec. The initials were chosen deliberately: they were those of O.J. Noer, the most respected turf agronomist in North America, who had died shortly before.

Built on handshakes

The range broadened — grass seed, fertilizer, chemicals, then machinery — and Otto became the exclusive Jacobsen distributor for Québec and Eastern Ontario, with thirty employees behind him. The business grew on personal charm, warm handshakes and honest practices, and it outlived every one of its competitors. He insisted that every customer receive a box of apples each fall and a bottle of wine each Christmas. In 1999 he received the John B. Steel Distinguished Service Award for his contribution to the turf industry.

“If the customer needs it right now, we have to get it to him right now.”

Ludmila

Otto did not build it alone. Ludmila arrived from Czechoslovakia in 1968 to visit the father she had known almost entirely through letters since the age of three. Trained in Prague as a technical draftswoman, she was working at Dominion Engineering within months. Then Soviet tanks entered Prague, and going home was no longer a choice she could make. She and Otto met at her uncle's farm, and they married in 1970.

The legacy

When his son Phil and his daughter Gaby finished their university studies, they joined the company. Otto served as its president until his death in 2008; Phil became President on January 1 of that year, and Gaby serves as Vice-President. His three granddaughters are the third generation of a company that began with one man.