Kyle MacDonald spent years demanding things from suppliers before he became one. What he found on the other side of the counter is the starting point for everything Stone Depot is doing now — commercial jobs, equipment rental, and a frank conversation about an aging mason workforce that should concern every general contractor in Atlantic Canada.
Stone Depot has been in business since 1994, when Ken Timmins started it as a landscaping-installation outfit in Halifax. Over three decades it evolved into what it is today: Atlantic Canada’s primary masonry and landscape product retailer, running a 3,000-square-foot showroom in Bayers Lake and stocking everything from Techo-Bloc pavers and Permacon slabs to Eldorado Stone veneer, landscape lighting, and propane fire features. Kyle MacDonald — NSCC Horticulture graduate, red-seal journeyman installer, owner since 2021 — bought a business he had previously bought from.
That transition is where the episode starts, and it’s the most useful framing: what you expect when you’re the contractor ordering materials, and what’s actually happening on the supplier side.
“being on the side of the retail store was an eye-opener what these guys get put through,” MacDonald says.
Head of Sales Andrew Pepper and Permacon Atlantic Sales Lead Kevin McGinnis join the conversation. Together they trace a picture of a regional building materials market shifting toward commercial scale — with one critical constraint sitting directly in its way.
The other side of the counter
Most contractors who become suppliers already know the product. They don’t know the operational weight on the receiving end of their own expectations. MacDonald arrived with 18 years of field experience and quickly discovered that running a supply operation — managing delivery logistics, keeping SKUs stocked across 50+ product lines, serving homeowners and commercial accounts and contractors from the same showroom floor — is a different job than any of those constituents assume.
The discipline that emerges from that experience shows up in how Stone Depot approaches its commercial push. Understanding the contractor’s pressure on supply means understanding what they need to win a job and what will cost them the relationship if it doesn’t show up on time. For large commercial deliveries, MacDonald describes skipping the yard entirely: “some of those bigger projects you are just taking it from direct from manufacturer to site there’s no you know I don’t have to bring it to my yard.” Direct ship from manufacturer removes double-handling and solves the space problem for a showroom retailer moving into multi-pallet commercial volumes.
That’s not a minor detail. It’s what makes the commercial model viable at current scale.
Large-format pavers and the rental bridge
The large-format paver trend — Mega Melville slabs, smooth-surface concrete in sizes that require vacuum lifters and roller tampers to place correctly — creates both an opportunity and a barrier for smaller landscape contractors. The product is in high demand. The equipment to install it properly costs real money to own.
Stone Depot’s answer is a rental model that lowers the entry point. A contractor can rent a vacuum lifter for one or two jobs, price the gear into their labor estimate, and make an honest calculation about when it tips to ownership. “you rent it you know for one or two jobs the next thing you do listen man I can spend this much in rentals or I can just buy it,” MacDonald says. The path from renter to buyer is a conversion model built on actual use, not a sales pitch.
McGinnis, whose Permacon dealer network supplies Stone Depot, frames the rental cost correctly: “renting this gear incorporating that variable into your labor costs too absolutely that’s a big deal.” If you’re pricing a large-format paver job and not building the lifter rental into your labor line as a direct variable cost, you’re absorbing it as margin compression — or discovering it on site when someone throws their back out. Neither is a winning outcome.
Winning commercial work: the architect comes first
Stone Depot’s most visible commercial debut is the Richmond Yards development in Halifax’s North End — the large mixed-use project at Robie and Almon Streets developed by Westwood Developments, which is running north of 1,000 residential units across multiple towers. The hardscape scope includes 18,000 square feet of boulevard pavers, Air-Tech planters, and Melville retaining wall.
Getting to a project that size requires a different sales motion than residential or small commercial. Pepper describes the commercial pipeline clearly: get the product specified by the architect before the project goes to tender. “first of all the building owner yeah that’s just coming to the architect … put it in plans … then it’s put out to tender.” If you’re not in the spec when the drawings go out, you’re a value-engineering target. By the time the tender comes back, the decision is already made — or unmade.
The implication for contractors looking to crack commercial hardscape is the same: cultivate the landscape architect relationship early, get specified, and treat the tender as a confirmation step rather than the entry point. A Fredericton city-extension project discussed in the episode reinforces the pattern — these jobs are earned upstream.
The aging mason problem
The hardest constraint on commercial masonry growth in Nova Scotia is not product availability or contractor capacity in the abstract. It’s people.
Data surfaced at Permacon’s Elevate seminar put the average mason in Nova Scotia in their 50s. That number should stop any general contractor mid-sentence. “the average Mason was like basically in their 50s in Nova Scotia … so that’s been a hard thing,” MacDonald says. The retirement wave is not coming — it’s already here for the first wave of that cohort. And unlike product shortages, this one doesn’t resolve when a shipping container arrives.
The problem compounds in a specific and expensive way: when skilled masons aren’t available, some contractors try to substitute. They send a tile installer to do veneer work, or assume that because someone can lay a floor they can lay a brick. It doesn’t work. “we’ve certainly seen plenty of jobs look awful because you simply thought that your tile guy … could do the job.” Remediation is more expensive than doing it right, and it destroys the subcontractor relationship. Masonry is a trade, not a transferable skill.
For product-knowledge sales, MacDonald sets an honest baseline: getting a new hire to genuine competency takes time. “I usually say in this industry you need … one to two years to kind of even get … like a 75 knowledge of the product.” That’s the ramp — expect it rather than fight it.
Making the trades visible
The talent problem doesn’t have a single fix, but the episode is direct about one part of it: young people aren’t connecting the visible, skilled, outdoor work of masonry to a viable career path. Social media changes the equation. A mason with a strong Instagram or YouTube presence — documenting real project work, not promotional content — becomes an advertisement for the trade itself.
“you can be an influencer in this sort of Industry … work on your trade and then use that to be that influencer on the market,” McGinnis observes. The trades niche is undersaturated in Atlantic Canada relative to how many people are watching construction content. That gap is an opportunity for skilled tradespeople who are willing to document their work, and it’s the kind of recruitment signal that reaches people who would never scan a job board.
Stone Depot’s own rebranding reflects the same impulse — shedding what the team describes as a dated image to attract a newer generation of contractors and homeowners who are making product decisions after watching videos, not after reading catalogs.
The market is growing
The episode closes on a note that matters for anyone sizing the commercial opportunity in Atlantic Canada. The conversation isn’t about fighting for share from existing suppliers. “it’s not just about getting your piece of the pie it’s also like growing the pie and that pie is growing,” MacDonald says. Nova Scotia’s construction market is expanding, and commercial hardscape demand is moving faster than the incumbent supplier base’s capacity to serve it. Stone Depot is positioning to reach contractors in New Brunswick and Newfoundland, not just Halifax.
For contractors in those markets who have been sourcing materials from out of province or making do with limited local options, the supply infrastructure is catching up to the demand.
Featured in this episode:
The Stone Depot is Halifax’s masonry and landscape supply retailer, stocking natural and manufactured stone, pavers, veneers, and outdoor-living products from Techo-Bloc, Permacon, Eldorado Stone, and 50+ other lines. Their Bayers Lake showroom offers cutting, delivery, and tool rental — including the vacuum lifters and roller tampers discussed in this episode. Contractors and homeowners working on hardscape projects in Atlantic Canada can explore the full product range at thestonedepot.ca. Follow them on Instagram.
Westwood Developments is the Halifax-based, family-owned developer behind Richmond Yards — the North End mixed-use project featured as Stone Depot’s marquee commercial debut. They design, build, lease, and manage their own residential, mixed-use, and commercial properties across the Halifax market. More at westwoodgroup.ca.
Guests: Kyle MacDonald (CEO, The Stone Depot), Andrew Pepper (Head of Sales, The Stone Depot), and Kevin McGinnis (Atlantic Sales Lead, Permacon). Episode 55 of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Watch the full episode. Permacon is a brand of Oldcastle APG, a CRH Company, with manufacturing plants in Quebec and Ontario.