HANDMADE IN BURLINGTON, ONTARIO
About Mekanakana
We’re Meghan and Dan — a wife-and-husband maker team with a workshop, a growing collection of tools, and a healthy Canadian respect for wood, humour, and trying again after saying “well, that wasn’t supposed to happen.”
PLACEHOLDER IMAGE — swap me for something gloriously sawdust-covered later.
What is Mekanakana?
Mekanakana started during COVID with a few business experiments, one small CNC machine, and the very Canadian belief that if something doesn’t work the first time, you apologize to it and try again.
Some of those early ideas worked. Some were… character building. Let’s call them that.
Then we made a few wooden tic-tac-toe boards and discovered the part we actually loved: taking a raw material and turning it into something people wanted to pick up, use, give away, or occasionally argue over.
From there came laser cutting, engraving, cedar coasters with funny sayings, and local markets where we learned that few things are more satisfying than watching someone read one of our products, laugh, and immediately drag a friend over with, “You need to see this.”
That was the moment.
Today we make coasters, ornaments, signs, door knockers, Pop Out Kits, greeting cards, printed pieces, custom creations, and an ever-growing list of things we probably didn’t need to make — but absolutely had to.
We still design, make, finish and package everything ourselves in Burlington, Ontario. The tools have gotten bigger, the collection has gotten broader, and there is now considerably more sawdust involved.
THE NAME. YES, THERE’S A STORY.
So, what does Mekanakana mean?
When we started this little adventure, we decided we needed a better business name than just Meg & Dan. Revolutionary thinking, really.
So, like sensible people with access to an early version of AI, we asked what “Meg and Dan” would be in Hawaiian. Why Hawaiian? Because we’ve always wanted to go there, it sounded different, and apparently that qualified as strategy.
We still haven’t made it to Hawaii. It remains on the list.
As it turns out, AI and search engines have improved a bit since then, and Mekanakana does not actually mean “Meg and Dan” in Hawaiian. In fact, as far as we can tell, it doesn’t really mean anything at all.
Which is strangely perfect, because now we get to define it ourselves.
To us, Mekanakana (meh-kana-kana) means making things with character.
OUR HIGHLY SCIENTIFIC QUALITY STANDARD
Handmade on purpose.
We think handmade should look handmade because a person cared about it — not because someone lost a fight with a sander. Quality matters. Details matter. And if we’re putting our name on something, you should be getting our best work.
That means clean craftsmanship, good materials, crisp artwork, durable finishes, and enough respect for natural wood to let the grain, knots and colour variations do their thing.
Character isn’t something we add at the end. It’s the whole point.
Enough about us. The wood is getting jealous.
Have a look at what we’ve been making lately.