Artisan broom company in Vancouver sweeps customers away with its traditional designs - Action News
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British Columbia

Artisan broom company in Vancouver sweeps customers away with its traditional designs

Mary Schwieger and her sister Sarah, owners of Granville Island Broom Co., use antique tools and techniques to create what could be considered traditional-style brooms.

Brooms are part of cultural traditions and folklore all over the world, anthropologist explains

Sarah Schwieger makes a broom at the Granville Island Broom Co in Vancouver, British Columbia on Friday, October 28, 2022.
Sarah Schwieger, pictured, and her sister Mary run Granville Island Broom Co., a specialty broom shop in Vancouver, B.C. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

A quirky shop tucked away on Vancouver's Granville Island turns the heads of locals and tourists alike. Their unique handmade wares while practical, everyday items are a bit of a time warp, sending customers back to the days before mass producedplastic cleaning tools, and to tales of witches flying through the night.

We're talking about brooms, of course.

Mary Schwieger and her sister Sarah, owners of Granville Island Broom Co., use antique tools and techniques to create what could be considered traditional-style brooms, with long wooden handles and thick organic bristles woven together.

"It's something I just grew up with and learned from my parents" Schwiegersaid.

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Her parents learned to make brooms from a friend who learned the skill from a Shaker village. The Shakers, formally known as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, are widely credited with inventing flat brooms made with sorghum.

Also known as broom corn, sorghum is the strong fibre bristles of a broom that sweep dirt away.

Sorghum, which is used to make brooms is pictured at the Granville Island Broom Co in Vancouver, British Columbia on Friday, October 28, 2022.
Sorghum, also called broom corn, is used to make the bristles of a broom. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Schwieger then learned to make brooms just by being in their parents' shop, on the East side of Kootenay Lake, as children, eventually working there to pay for university.

The sisters opened their own shop more than 12 years ago, where they sell several different types of handmade brooms, including cobwebbers, whisks, mushroom brushes and marriage brooms.

The Schwieger sisters learned to make traditional brooms from their parents in B.C's Kootenay region. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

History and folklore

Schwieger said broomsare a popular housewarming gift.

On the shop's website, they suggest a specific housewarming trio:bread, so "the house may never know hunger," salt "so that life always has flavour," and a broom "to sweep away troubles."

Brooms also feature in cultural traditions.

Brooms are picture for sale at the Granville Island Broom Co in Vancouver, British Columbia on Friday, October 28, 2022.
The history of brooms and its folklore are wide-reaching, as most cultures have some form of broom, says anthropologist Sabina Magliocco. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Sabina Magliocco, a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia, says brooms were used to symbolize marriage for enslaved African Americans, who were not afforded the right to marry.

"People developed their own way of marking a ceremony, of marking the start of a new family by jumping over a broom," she said.

"When you're stepping over something, you're crossing a threshold."

Mary Schwieger makes a broom at the Granville Island Broom Co in Vancouver, British Columbia on Friday, October 28, 2022.
Mary Schwieger makes a broom at the Granville Island Broom Co. in Vancouver, B.C. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Historically in West Africa, people waved brooms over a new couple for good luck, Magliocco says.

In Wales, stepping or jumping over a broom, broom straws or even a broom plant marked a common law marriage.

"Almost every culture has some form of broom."

A customer browses the Granville Island Broom Co in Vancouver, British Columbia on Friday, October 28, 2022.
A customer browses the selection of brooms at Granville Island Broom Co. in Vancouver, B.C. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Of course, we can't talk about brooms without mentioning their connection to witches.

Magliocco says the first stories of witches flying on broom straws goback to the 1400s.

"We had mentions of witches before that, but not on broomsticks or broom straws."

Because everyone had a broom in their home, it was something witches, who were mostly women, would have had.

"The broomstick, the broom is a 'woman's tool,'" she said.

"Because it is associated with the home, with women, with women's work, it becomes something that then gets associated with witches in the very misogynistic witchcraft mythology of the Middle Ages."

She said today, among modern Pagan witches, the broom is being reclaimed as a magical tool to repudiate the memory of a time where any woman with a broom was suspected of witchcraft.

With files from Emma Djwa