Dufferin Games: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Billiards Giant
If you played pool in Canada anytime from the 1970s to the early 2000s, you almost certainly handled a Dufferin cue — maybe without realizing it. For a generation, Dufferin was the house cue racked on the wall of nearly every pool hall, bar, and basement rec room in the country. It grew from a tiny Toronto wood shop into Canada’s largest maker of pool cues and tables, built a coast-to-coast retail chain, and then — surprisingly fast — disappeared. Here’s the full story.
Quick facts: Dufferin was founded in 1967 in Toronto by Al and Elizabeth Selinger. At its peak it was Canada’s largest manufacturer of both billiard cues and pool tables, made the famous one-piece Hi-Run house cue, and ran a national chain of Dufferin Games stores. The company went bankrupt in 2004, and the brand name was sold in 2005 with production moving overseas.
Humble beginnings: a Toronto wood shop, 1967
Dufferin’s story starts not with billiards but with woodworking. In 1967, Al and Elizabeth (“Betty”) Selinger bought a small custom wood business in Toronto called Dufferin Patterns & Wood Specialties. They renamed it Dufferin Cue and set themselves a single goal: build the highest-quality billiard cue at the best possible price. In their very first year, they turned out about 5,000 cues.
To make the straightest cues possible, the Selingers hired skilled wood craftsmen and built their own custom cue-making machinery rather than buying off the shelf. That obsession with straightness and consistency — using Canadian hard rock maple — became the foundation of the brand’s reputation. Their slogan summed up the whole operation: “Quality, Tradition, Family and Fun.”
One wood shop becomes four companies
Over the following decades, that single business grew into a vertically integrated billiards empire made up of four divisions:
- Dufferin Cue Ltd. — Canada’s largest manufacturer of billiard cues.
- Dufferin Leisure Ltd. — Canada’s largest manufacturer of pool tables.
- Selinger Wood Ltd. — a hardwood mill supplying the maple for the cues and tables.
- Dufferin Games Ltd. — the national retail chain that sold it all.
In 1978 the Selingers bought a woodworking facility in Goderich, Ontario and founded Selinger Wood Ltd., guaranteeing their own steady supply of premium hard maple. Controlling the wood from log to finished cue is a big part of why Dufferin could keep quality high and prices low at the same time. By the early 2000s, that wood division was processing roughly five million board feet of lumber a year.
The Hi-Run cue and a worldwide house standard
The product that made Dufferin a household name was the one-piece Hi-Run cue. Tough, straight, and affordable, it became the standard “house” cue — the kind bolted to the wall rack in commercial rooms everywhere. At the brand’s height, an estimated 75% of North American pool clubs insisted on Dufferin cues.
This was no small workshop. At its peak Dufferin Cue was described as one of the most technically advanced volume cue factories in the world, producing more than half a million cues a year in some 50 different models. Roughly three-quarters of the line was exported — to the U.S., Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Central and South America, and the Far East. A Canadian cue, made from Canadian maple, ended up on tables on every continent.
Tables, too: Canada’s biggest pool table maker
Cues were only half the business. After establishing the Goderich mill, the Selingers bought a small plant that built about 300 tables a year and grew it dramatically. Under the Dufferin Leisure name, the company became Canada’s largest pool table manufacturer, turning out more than 5,000 tables annually across several models (collectors will recognize names like the Dufferin Titan). The factory also produced game-room accessories — cue racks, scoreboards, and furniture — plus foosball and other game tables.
The Dufferin Games retail chain
In the mid-1980s the Selingers added the piece most Canadians actually remember: the Dufferin Games stores. These mall and big-box-style shops popped up from coast to coast — Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and beyond. They sold the full Dufferin lineup of tables, cues, and game-room furniture alongside table tennis, foosball, table hockey, dart boards, board games, electronic games, puzzles, and novelty gifts.
The retail side won real recognition: Dufferin Games took the Retail Council of Canada’s Excellence in Retailing Award for staff development in 1996, and was a finalist in retail marketing, store design, and Canadian Entrepreneur of the Year categories through the late 1990s. The company even produced officially licensed Marvel pool cues and game-room products in the early 2000s. By then everything had been consolidated under one banner, Dufferin Games Ltd., headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario.
What happened to Dufferin Games?
Despite the brand’s strength, the business ran into financial trouble in the early 2000s. Dufferin Games filed for bankruptcy in Canada in 2004, and the familiar retail stores vanished from malls around the same time. After more than 35 years, one of Canada’s great manufacturing success stories was gone almost overnight.
In February 2005, the Dufferin cue brand name was purchased by Jim Lucas — the man behind Cue & Case Sales and the Lucasi and Players cue brands. Production of “Dufferin” cues was moved overseas to China, alongside Lucasi manufacturing. Cues carrying the Dufferin name are still sold today, but they are no longer the Canadian-made, Canadian-maple cues that built the reputation.
Why did Dufferin go bankrupt?
The main reason that comes up in industry discussions is over-aggressive expansion of the retail chain — not any problem with the manufacturing itself.
As long as the company stayed focused on its core — cues and tables — it was strong. But through the 1980s and 1990s the Selingers built a large nationwide chain of Dufferin Games stores, and the product range moved well beyond billiards: board games, darts, foosball, electronic toys, and novelty gifts. By industry accounts, once the business passed to the next generation, capital was tied up in that retail growth and diversification rather than in what had built the brand’s reputation — quality cues and tables. A capital-heavy chain of mall stores plus the inventory to stock them meant high fixed costs, and when the first serious financial stress hit in the early 2000s, that’s what brought the company down. The result was bankruptcy in 2004.
A background factor — though not confirmed as the main one: the early 2000s brought a wave of cheap imports from China that squeezed the margins of manufacturers like Dufferin. Sources mention this as context for the era, but not as the stated cause of the bankruptcy — the recurring explanation everywhere is over-expansion in retail.
Collecting vintage Dufferin cues
Because of that split, there’s a clear line for collectors and players: Canadian-made Dufferin cues from before 2005 are the ones enthusiasts seek out. Made from Canadian hard rock maple in the Mississauga and Goderich operations, they’re remembered for being honest, durable, dead-straight value cues — the cues, as one longtime player put it, that Americans admired but could rarely buy new because Dufferin sold mostly to the Canadian market.
If you’re trying to date a Dufferin, the country of origin and older logo styles are the giveaways — a pre-2005 Canadian-made stick is a genuine piece of Canadian billiards history. Tables stamped Dufferin Leisure likewise date to the original manufacturing era.
A Canadian billiards legacy
Dufferin’s arc — from a 1967 wood shop to a half-million-cues-a-year giant and back to a licensed brand name — is one of the defining stories of the Canadian cue industry. For decades, “made in Canada from Canadian hard rock maple” wasn’t a marketing line for Dufferin; it was simply how the cues were built. That heritage of straight, dependable, maple cues is still the standard Canadian players measure value cues against today.
In our view, Dufferin stands as one of the few truly outstanding names in the history of billiards. Decades later, Dufferin tables are still in service in homes across the country, and knowledgeable players happily buy tables that are well over 30 years old. The construction was so well thought out and so solidly built that these tables move from place to place with ease and simply serve their new owners again — fit fresh cloth and replace the cushion rubber on the rails, and the table plays like new. They were built honestly, to last — and that kind of craftsmanship is hard to find today.
Frequently asked questions
When was Dufferin founded?
Dufferin was founded in 1967 in Toronto by Al and Elizabeth Selinger, who bought a small wood shop and renamed it Dufferin Cue.
Are Dufferin cues still made?
Cues are still sold under the Dufferin name, but the brand was bought in 2005 and production moved to China. The original Canadian-made Dufferin cues were produced until the company’s 2004 bankruptcy.
Where were original Dufferin cues made?
In Canada — manufactured in Mississauga, Ontario, using Canadian hard rock maple milled at the company’s own facility in Goderich, Ontario.
What was the Dufferin Hi-Run cue?
The Hi-Run was Dufferin’s one-piece house cue. Affordable and very straight, it became the standard commercial “house” cue, with an estimated 75% of North American clubs using Dufferin cues at the brand’s peak.
Are old Dufferin cues worth anything?
Canadian-made pre-2005 Dufferin cues are valued by players and collectors as reliable, well-made vintage value cues. Condition, model, and originality drive what any individual cue is worth.
How much do old Dufferin pool tables cost?
It depends on how you buy. Having a 30+ year-old Dufferin table professionally delivered and set up will typically run about CAD $2,500–$4,000 all in. But a good table can often be found secondhand on Facebook Marketplace for as little as CAD $400–$1,000 — many homeowners selling their house are forced to part with a pool table and let it go cheap simply because they have no other option. There’s a big selection across the GTA, so search around and you can pick up a piece of the legend for very little.
Related Billiards Guides
- Best Pool Cue Brands — A Complete Guide for Pool Players
- Maple vs Carbon Fiber Pool Cue Shafts: Which Is Worth It?
- What Pool Cue Joint Does My Brand Use?
- How to Choose Your First Pool Cue
Love Canadian billiards history? Browse the Aska Billiards cue collection — hard rock Canadian maple cues built in the same tradition of straight, dependable value.
Sources: company history and details compiled from Billiards Forum (billiardsforum.com) and cue-industry references. Dates and figures reflect commonly cited industry accounts and should be treated as a historical overview.