Toronto Argonaut turned military outfitter wants Canadian Army to be ‘brilliant at the basics’

But there is something (ahem) fitting about the Grey Cup-winning former B.C. Lions and Toronto Argonauts linebacker, whose company started off making sustainable winter coats, ending up in the uniform business.

In this case, military uniforms — ones he would like to see worn by the men and (particularly) the women of the Canadian Armed Forces.

“There’s a lot of attention … going to these exquisite systems — the subs and boats and rockets,” Yurichuk said in an interview. “We’ve got to be brilliant at the basics, and right now we’re limiting the capability because of the inadequate uniforms that our soldiers are wearing.”

Being “brilliant at the basics” is a lesson drilled into the 39-year-old Yurichuk from his years on the football field. Another truism of the sport is that timing and positioning are of vital importance.

This is what’s driving many Canadian defence-focused companies as the federal government aims to increase military spending with contracts benefiting Canadian firms and, ultimately, bolstering a national economy against the impacts of American trade tariffs.

But Wuxly’s path from making ethically sourced parkas to functional and high-tech military gear also owes something to the dictum about never letting a good crisis go to waste.

Yurichuk’s company was born of a very tangible need: to make a winter coat capable of keeping his Brazilian girlfriend warm through a Canadian winter.

“I knew that if we didn’t keep her warm, she wouldn’t last very long,” he said.

He wanted a Canadian-made coat manufactured without animal products like down feathers or fur. He assembled experienced designers and pattern makers, studied commercial and military parkas, and came up with a prototype, which he presented to Daniella, his now-wife, for Christmas in 2012.

He established the company in 2015 as he considered the end of his football career.

“I was kind of moonlighting,” he said. “I’d sneak off to the factory just before practice started and I’d sneak back and go to practice and then I’d go back to the factory at night just to get the brand off the ground.”

He knew the time had come to make the switch from ball to business during a train ride from Toronto to Montreal ahead of an Oct. 2, 2016, game against the Montreal Alouettes.

The beginning of the road trip coincided with the final day of a promotional voucher offering $100 off a Wuxly coat.

“We made more money in that train ride than I had in the previous two weeks of playing football,” Yurichuk said. “It was like, OK, here’s a sign that it’s time to take the next step.”

The business was getting rolling when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Millions of Canadians were suddenly confined to the warmth of their homes. It was a potential disaster for a budding outerwear company, until the supply chains bringing medical gowns, masks and other essential protective gear from China strained and failed.

“There weren’t many Canadian makers that were able to make (personal protective equipment) and so the phone was ringing off the hook for us to make medical gowns,” Yurichuk said.

Wuxly ended up supplying 10 million gowns to Canadian health authorities, winning contracts worth $100 million over two years, he said.

When the COVID crisis passed, war in Ukraine erupted.

Russia’s 2022 invasion struck a chord with Yurichuk, a fourth generation Ukrainian Canadian, who recounted the impact of watching the news and seeing the impact and suffering of people who resembled members of his own family.

The war, and contributing to the defence of an invaded country, became a “higher calling” that soon rivalled Wuxly’s early push to construct an ethically sourced winter coat.

He responded to early efforts to support Ukraine by providing jackets and sleeping bags, manufactured on the same production lines that had been used to produce medical gowns during the previous crisis.

Wuxly has since supplied 40,000 female-specific combat uniforms on Department of National Defence contracts to the Ukrainian military.

“It’s a very proud point for our company because right now Ukraine has the largest female soldier force with 70,000 reported female soldiers.”

But it’s also ironic, he notes, because Canada’s own military does not have female-specific combat uniforms.

The Department of National Defence showcased a prototype combat uniform for female personnel last December that it plans to bring into circulation next year.

“They’ve been developing this uniform set for six years, and there’s talks about releasing it in 2027,” Yurichuk said. “We did our (Ukrainian) uniforms in six weeks.”

The company has landed contracts supplying pants and tactical vests for the RCMP and is producing pieces for Finland and Norway that Yurichuk is not at liberty to discuss.

And Wuxly was selected last month to work with Vimy Forge, a government-funded program to support and develop emerging small- and medium-sized Canadian defence firms.

The company is developing lines of “smart” military uniforms capable of monitoring the heart rate, temperature and other vital signs of deployed soldiers — technology that has been adopted by everyone from elite sporting teams to weekend joggers eager to study and enhance performance.

“We see a real opportunity to bring them into the military uniform,” Yurichuk said. “We think that a soldier in three-to-10 years from now is going to demand smart textiles on their soldier kit because there’s operational and human advantages that can be created.”

He pointed to a news headline last month about a cold-weather military exercise in Alaska that resulted in more than 30 Canadian soldiers being treated for frostbite.

“Smart textiles can let the central command know that, hey, this guy’s got early onset frostbite and we’ve got to pull him out of there and get him to a warm scenario, like ASAP.”

Creating and conserving heat by any means possible is all-the-more relevant with the government’s focus to increase the Canadian military presence in the Arctic.

And Yurichuk said there is an opportunity for Canada to become a world leader if the government moves quickly.

“I think part of the strategy is that we should be looking at some of the systems that could give us a one-up on NATO allies, so that they’re coming to us as we’ve been a leader,” he said.

“And so we really think that investing a little bit more in its soldiers, in kit and smart textiles might be a good opportunity for Canada as we’re having this supercycle of defence spending.”