Chapman's Drug Store Building - Still a Bustling Corner

Today the blog features another impressive two storey building in downtown Reston, easily recognizable with its red brick front and light brown sides.  Contrasting brick in a fan pattern used around the window and down the corner shows the pride in its craftsmanship. I haven't found the name of the builder who was tasked by Dr. Chapman in 1907 to create it but maybe one of my readers knows. 

Doctor Alva Burton Chapman first arrived in Reston in 1900. Reston was only intended as a quick stop to visit his cousin George on his way to B.C. He found the growing village in need of his services and decided to send for his wife Abbie and stay. His first office was built in 1902 on the east side of Main Street with his home beside it. Surprisingly, he later moved his house back to 5th Street where it still stands in order to make room for the bank. A.B. served as Major Chapman in the WW1 Medical Corps from 1915-1919.  He was wounded while retrieving injured soldiers at Vimy Ridge and was awarded the Military Cross for his bravery.  

Drugstore owners in this building - According to Trails Along the Pipestone (1981) page 498

1907-10 - Dr. A.B. Chapman
1910-18 - Burt Brown
1918-27 - Lloyd Fumerton
1927-36 - Harry Neil
!936-64 - Lyall McMorran
1964-78 - Wayne Morrow
1978 - 81 - Grant Schiltroth

The Drug Store is seen in this postcard view with the open upstairs window as it looked in 1913.  The Made in Canada Train seems to be the shop local campaign of its day. 

Besides a drug store, the building held the telephone switchboard and office space for the municipal administrator before their building was built in 1917. A dentist office on the second floor was a long standing tenant along with the physician's office. Miss Salisbury and Mrs. Clark (wife of another doctor) sold the latest fashionable hats in competition to Munro's Store on the second floor in the 1920's. Progressive advances over the years included electrifying the building in 1925 and the addition of an x-ray machine in 1930 for use of the dentist as well as the doctor.  A ice cream and cold drink counter at the back of the store was a popular place on Saturday nights starting in 1936.  A liquor department was added in the late 1950's.   After the Schiltroth’s built a new building across Second Avenue and moved over in 1981, the building was a clothing store, The Tog Shoppe, owned by Ted and Lorna Birch.  After renovations and updating in 2006, the building became known as Unique Scrapbooking owned by Pat Hamel and her daughter Leah Hume. Along with scrapbooking materials, they sold balloons, cake decorating supplies and more.  The bus depot and Sears catalog outlet were added.  As the building celebrated 100 years, they took on modernizing the second floor for office and classroom space.  Today, the building has come full circle to be owned again by Nancy Schiltroth who added much needed rental suites on the second floor. It houses a hugely successful second hand venture on the main floor, Hidden Treasures. Not many times when I go in do I leave without a treasure or two.

"Essentials" purchased from the drugstore by the Boultons in 1957- 58

Pictured to the left is original building owner Doctor and Mrs. Reita Chapman posing with faithful dog, Monty. A 90th birthday party was held in Reston Park in his honour in 1953 and 460 people signed the guest book. He was instrumental in building his community - The Masonic Hall, Memorial Theatre, United Church and Hospital were all built with his firm support. He was also involved in the School Board, Memorial Park and Agricultural Society. His hobbies including hunting and making violins. His medical and community advise was reportedly sought long after he retired. Dr. Chapman remained in the community until 1961 when he passed away at age 98 and was buried in Seeleys Bay, Ontario beside his first wife Abbie Berry Chapman who had died in 1938. He had remarried to Reita Taber in 1954. 

The McKee Archives at Brandon University includes some other pictures of the drugstore including some interior shots like this one.  More are available online here.   

Corrections, additions and comments (link at the bottom of this post) are always welcome. Thanks again to the John and Verna Olenick for the street scene postcards used here and picture and information about Dr. Chapman.

Reston House - A Spot to Remember

Cadet Corps marching on Main Street in about 1914 With Reston House in the background

A mostly forgotten building on Main Street is the focus of this blog post, Reston House. I noticed its prominent sign on a few street scenes from the postcard collection of the Olenicks and have consulted the first Trails Along the Pipestone history book and a clipping from a 1973 Reston Recorder but would love any other information or memories about the building.

A man named Alex Robertson was born in Clayton in Lanark County, Ontario in 1872 and first headed west with a harvest excursion in 1895. Page 599 of the history book says six bachelors including Alex built a shack with bunks and spent the winter in Reston in 1898. This would have likely spurred him to use his carpentry skills to build a larger boarding house, which became known as the Reston House on the northeast corner of Fourth Street and Second Avenue. It was a brick veneered 2 storey building and later had a wood addition on the back. Owners in the early years included John M. Elliot, ? Mathers, Alfred Seep , George Chapman and Andy Sutton. Nightly and weekly room rates were available. By Mr. Seep’s time, the rates for room and board were $6.00 a week. Meal tickets were available at 20 meals for $4.00. Besides the private rooms, an area in the attic called "The Ram’s Pasture" held cots for overflow use. The June 1906 census lists 37 boarders under head hotel keeper John M. Elliott. They were all single men in their 20’s in Reston, likely here for railway work as agricultural labourers would live on the farms.  This was the first year that The Peanut line was opened so the town of Reston was booming with these workers.

 

Thanks to Shirley Bulloch for this photo of Reston House from her family collection. 

Richard (Dick) V. Cusack was a long running owner, beginning his tenure after serving in the war in 1919.  He is listed on the 1921 Canadian Census at the Reston boarding house with his brother Henry. Barbara Low was listed as one of the servants at the hotel but in 1922, she also became Richard’s bride. Barbara (known as Babbs) and her sister Helen (Nellie) had left Scotland and joined their brother William Low and his wife Mary Ann in Canada in 1920.  Dick and Babbs raised 2 daughters and ran the hotel for many years. Richard was also a barber and set up his chair in the hotel lobby. It was during his ownership that the hotel had a basement put under it to replace of the large stones that the building sat on previously. After Dick's death in 1959, Babbs lived with her sister Helen Low in a house east of the hotel, perhaps one you can see down the street scene below. This house is now on the McPherson farm south of Reston.  Their great-niece Brenda Ellis-Anderson remembers a talking budgie bird and wrap around verandah from visiting them there.  

The interior has been described to me as having a large lobby where you first walked in from the west. A big open stairway led from the lobby to the 18 rooms above. A center hall led back from the lobby to the pool room which was on the north side at the back. This was the same room that became the beverage room in 1947 when a vote allowed Reston to be “wet”. The pool tables were then moved across to Berry’s Barber Shop to make room. Down the hall was also a dining room with 2 large tables and a separate kitchen. The lobby was used as a venue for travelling salesman to show their wares, a gathering spot for visiting, checkers (also known as draughts), music and other entertainers.  There were doors out the north and south side as well as the main entrance on the west.  The picture below looks like a sunroom built over the front porch - a warm place on a summer day I imagine.  

Go Kart Racers on Main Street about 1950 - Sandy and Raymond White with the "Red Rocket"

After the Cusacks, John Bonder  and later Ed and Rita Gulas owned and ran the hotel. The later couple were active members of the community, and entrepreneurs.  Ed was an avid hunter and his albino mounted deer head was legendary.  Rita’s mother was instrumental in helping with the hotel and the  children - Greg, Barb, Lydia and Brenda - especially when Rita became ill with cancer.  

 

In December of 1962, ten lots were sold to Ed Gulas along #2 highway for $1 per lot. The building of the a new modern Reston Motor Hotel meant the old building was no longer needed. The grand opening of Gulas’s new venture was held on February 17, 1966. The old unused building slowly deteriorated until it was finally torn down in the winter of 1973. The Rest'n Inn continues to welcome travelers and locals today. 

The corner of Main Street and Second Avenue was a prime location and Dr. Samuel Cleo built the Aurora Building in that spot in the late 1970's.  Dr. Cleto arrived in Reston on October 1, 1972 and practiced his profession for the next two decades plus. The corner was home to the Credit Union from 1977 until they moved to their new building in 1995. A new district library was created at the east end of the Aurora building. It moved from its temporary location in the old rest room building in the spring of 1977. Over the years, the Aurora Building also housed the doctor office, a hair salon, the nursery school and my sister-in-law Wilma's scrapbooking and craft store. It is now the commercial kitchen for Patti Cakes and has apartments in the back. 

 Correction, additions, photos and memories of Reston House or any other special spots in Reston are welcome at ssimms@escape.ca .

Reston’s Historic Grocery Store - 118 Years and Counting

I am very pleased to share the story of Reston’s local grocery store thanks to pictures and clippings loaned to me by Verna and John Olenick. Now known as Reston Fine Foods and owned for the past 32 years by Murray and Brenda Anderson, it has a remarkable history. First time visitors never fail to notice the two-storey stone building on Main Street aka Fourth Street.  The tin tile ceiling inside gives a hint to how it looked when it was first built by G. S. Munro in 1902. Homesteaders, immigrants, long time residents and visitors have entered the doorway looking to stock their cupboards and clothe and feed their families. The store has stood through Main Street fires, parades, epidemics, war years, prosperity and depression. I've often looked up at the building trying to imagine the skill and engineering required by the stone mason William Albert Pierce (1866-1916) and building crew. The red granite sections of stone were cut from rock near the former Kinloss School, south of Reston.

Store Window Displays - Perhaps in 1939 during the Royal Tour of Canada

George Simon Munro (1865-1934) had been hired to work in Reston in 1893 as manager of a branch of Wilcox Store of Virden. This first shop was directly south of the present store. It was later used as a bake shop, ice cream parlour and barber shop with apartments upstairs until it burnt in 1934.  George reportedly enjoyed the town and marrying Catherine (Kate) Campbell in 1894 saw him put down roots.  They didn’t have children of their own but contributed greatly to their community in many ways. He began a company “Merchants Consolidated Limited” which helped small town grocery stores band together to improve their buying power and get better deals for their customers while still independently owning the store. The couple moved to Winnipeg as part of this new venture but his name remained on the store through the years as it was run by new owners and managers.

The Reston Recorder announced that electricity was first turned on in the store on a Saturday night in January of 1915.  Shopping in the dark corners was a thing of the past and the view from the street outside must have been something else to residents used to dim coil oil lanterns! The clipping above about the popular hat department spring reopening was in a Recorder from March 1918.  In fact, groceries as we think of them today was not the mainstay of the store in early days.  Meat, baked goods, dairy and eggs were often not purchased at the general store but home grown or purchased from specialty businesses. Known as “dry goods”, things like clothing, hats, shoes and fabric were needed and supplied by G. S. Munro Store.  The "Amazon" of its day.

Delivery in town and in the country was fundamental to the stores success, first by horse and buggy and later by truck.  R.C. Bulloch on the left and Burt Pierce on the right are pictured with the delivery truck purchased in 1935.    It is interesting to note this service has continued through the years, offered free to anyone asking - seniors or anyone staying safe in the Pandemic of 2020. 

Second Avenue and Third Street corner around 1920 - thanks to Ashlea Laura

R.C. Bulloch was the son of Robert and Margaret (Caldwell) Bulloch who arrived in Reston from Lanark County Ontario in 1885 with his family. He was a founding shareholder of the store when it incorporated in 1902 after working for Munro since 1898, often riding his bike to work from the Bulloch farm to the northeast of town. A joint stock company was formed in 1905 with employees having the chance to be part owners. In 1927, it was made a United Store and the Solo branding began in 1953.

Beginning in 1955, a partnership of John Pearson, Burt Pierce and Gladys Slifka ran the store for many years.  Next owners were Don and Glenda Brading who christened it Glendon Solo Store in October of 1977.  Many faithful employees over the years include many students who had their first jobs at the store, including my own two sons Joel and Scott. 

Many updates were made through the years including the addition of a peaked rook in May of 1984 and a new and enlarged back room in 1994. Suites upstairs were created for renters. Interior stairs to the second floor were removed for more floor space.  A deli counter and mezzanine office were also part of the remodels. I am told the office was earlier on a raised platform on the northeast side where the floor safe still sits.  Price scanning, debit and credit machines, updated produce, dairy and frozen coolers have been gradually added to keep up with the times.  

One thing that hasn’t changed is the friendly small town service and willingness to meet the customers’ needs.  We may have taken it for granted over the years, but the Covid-19 pandemic reminds us how fortunate we are to have Murray and Brenda and the staff of Reston Fine Foods keeping us safe and fed.  

Corrections,  additions and your personal memories are always welcome to my email ssimms@escape.ca