Many lament the demise of the small grocery stores and their personalized friendly service. Timmins residents may remember the general store down by the river, known as Hubert’s Store. Owners of the store were Josephine and Alan Hubert. They also operated the Mattagami Heights Post Office. Their work also included the re-packing foods like rice, barley and molasses that arrived in bulk containers when he worked in the store after school. They also sold Kerosene and gasoline. Block ice was cut on the Mattagami River in the winter and stored under sawdust in an ice-house until it was needed in the hot, summer months to keep meat and dairy products cold in the store.
Growing up in South Porcupine, I remember the family names of some of the grocery store owners – Ursulak, Clement, Ierullo, Decario, Anderson ( later Wood), Zupan, Sgro, Tadej, Slotnick (later Cronmiller and St. Amour), Vukovich, Purdon Laflamme, Pellizzari, Roderick, Stoynoff – names as varied as the countries that some of the store owners came from. We had the Worker’s Co-op and the Consumer’s Co-op – both of Finnish origin, as well as the Dominion Store.
Just as those 17 stores have disappeared, so have many of the products we bought. After we scrubbed the floors, they were shined with Johnson’s Glo-Coat or Beautiflor – both liquid waxes that required no polishing. For the purists, they could still buy Aero or Hawes paste wax, let it dry to a dull haze, then buff with a variety of polishers. I remember the thrill of putting on a pair of dad’s socks over my shoes and my mother would allow my sister and me to “skate” on the hardwood floor – and we never realized that we were actually helping to shine the floor!
Laundry was washed with Rinso. (Do you remember the radio jingle, “Rinso white, Rinso Bright. Happy little washday song.”?) Or you could also buy Maple Leaf Soap Flakes, Duz, (“Duz does everything”), Super Suds (“Super Suds, Super Suds, Lots more suds with Super Suds”) or Oxydol detergent. The clothes were rinsed with Rickett’s Bluing added to the water. For stubborn stains, mom pre-treated the spots with Fels-Naptha bar soap.
In the late 1940′s, margarine finally arrived in Ontario. We bought Good Luck brand. There were two parchment wrapped, white bars to a box and they came with small packets of colorant. To end up with a product that vaguely resembled butter, the housewife had to mix the colouring into the margarine herself. A sandwich could be made with bread from Fairhurst’s or Northland Bakery, Good Luck margarine and Nut Crush peanut butter. A steaming hot cup of Vi-Tone, made with KLIM (“That’s Milk spelled backwards”) rounded off the snack.
Blue Ribbon coffee came in quart jars; Christie’s Soda Biscuits came in large, flat metal tins with a lid, that mom saved and used to store her Christmas cakes. Lipton’s tea also came in metal cans, but with a Japanese motif. These were prized, and saved to store nuts, raisins and coconut before the availability of Tupperware.
There is a sweet nostalgia in remembering our old shopping lists for groceries and the wonderful people who served us in those stores. But at the same time, I’m glad I don’t have to colour my own margarine or polish floors with socks over my jogging shoes!
That’s my view from Over the Hill.
