Niagara Falls Then and Now: Old Storefronts on Queen St. (Part 2 of 10)

This post looks at the north side of Queen St. in Niagara Falls, Ont., walking eastward, from Ontario Ave. to Erie Ave.

****click on photos to enlarge! ****

Below: Behind (or, to the north of) the Bank of Montreal building (the back of which is seen at the far right of photo, and which stands on the north-east corner of Queen St. and Ontario Ave.) was located the Buckley's Furniture building. It faced the east side of Ontario Ave. Date of photo unknown.

above: same view, Jan.29, 2009; the northern portion of the Buckley's Furniture building has been demolished. The rear of the Bank of Montreal building is seen at the corner. The building with the second-floor bay window is seen in both above photos.

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below is an Aug.5, 1965 view of the Bank of Montreal building on the north-east corner of Queen St. and Ontario Ave. Jack's Army Navy is next to the east along Queen St.; the old Buckley's Furniture building can still be seen standing along Ontario Ave., behind the bank at the far left.

above: same location in 1971. Note clock at left corner is of a newer vintage than the clock shown in the next photo below. Also above the door is the now-familiar stylized "M" logo.
above: same view in colour, date unknown. BMO's colour scheme at the time, at least here, was red; now it's a medium blue, as seen below, with only a dot of red. The old style clock (compared to the one earlier above) dates this photo prior to 1971. The 'new' Canadian flags seen by the front door would mean that the date isn't earlier than Feb.15, 1965, the date when the red and white Maple Leaf flag was officially introduced. The older script is over the door.
above: same view, Feb.5, 2009. The back half of Buckley's Furniture (at the far left) has been demolished, now a parking lot.
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below: Jan.29, 1954 - looking at the front of the Bank of Montreal building, at its right (east) side. Grader's, a women's wear shop, is shown as having been in the east part of the building. Upstairs was a dentist's office.

above: Jan.29, 2009, same view. The former door to Grader's is now a window. The address of the building to the east (where Jack's was seen earlier, and also below) is now 4357 Queen St.; photo prior showed it as 357.

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below: continuing eastward along the north side of Queen St., next to the Bank of Montreal building was Jacks Army Navy, as seen May 5, 1965. Queen St. was once a bustling retail hub; with many major chain merchants as well as smaller shops and services represented throughout the strip from Rosberg's at the east end of Queen to Loblaws and Eatons at the west end along Victoria Ave. It was a shopping destination where customers could browse the street shops for an entire afternoon. It was what malls today attempt to recreate.

above: Dec.22, 2008 - same view, the little Palms Restaurant, along with its overhanging Coke sign, is gone, My Country Deli is seen expanded into that space. Where Jack's Army Navy Discount was, is now a curtained storefront.

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below: continuing walking east, now looking in a north-westerley direction at the bustling north-side of Queen St., the Bank of Montreal building is just out of frame at the far left (west) of photo, Jack's Army Navy is next to the east; then the Palms Restaurant (without the Coke sign at the time), then My Country Deli; then Hartmann's Meat Market; then a fabric shop. Date of photo unknown.

Above: same view, Feb.9, 2009. My Country Deli remains towards the centre left.

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Below: looking north-east down Queen St., from Ontario Ave., as seen Mar.20, 2009

above: the same view - date unknown, pos. 1920-30's: there are still streetcar tracks on Queen St. I've often wondered what the facade of that monstrous grey-steel-sided building (seen in the previous two above photos) had once looked like. The photo above gives a clue: in this view, the Bank of Montreal again is seen at the left on the n/e corner of Queen and Ontario; the next building is where Jack's and My Country Deli would later be; and then there appears this glorious three-story building with the bay windows! Can you imagine the dramatic improvement to the streetscape if this facade of bay windows were rebuilt, replacing that slab of steel?

above: Oct.1966 - looking at the Metropolitan Stores building at left, and Dale's at right.

above: same view, Dec.22, 2008

above: Apr. 1951 - same area, looking at the north-side of Queen St. in a north-easterly direction, towards Erie Ave. in the far right distance. The Metropolitan Stores is seen to the left, next is the Hat Box, then Dale's. The corner of Rosbergs department store, can be seen at the far right distance. Rosbergs stood at the north-east corner of Queen St. and Erie Ave.

above: same view, May, 1965. The Metropolitan has expanded into the former Hat Box space.

above: same view, Dec.22, 2008.

above: Apr.1951 - another look at the Metropolitan Stores

above: same view, Dec.22, 2008.

above: same location as above, seen from a little farther back to the east, date unknown. In the centre is Dale's, next to the east is Gullion's; and to the right is Cataract Sports, Hobbies, and Crafts.

above: same view, May, 1965. At this time, the building to the east of Gullion's was Logan's Dry Goods.

above: same view, Jan.29, 2009. The Bank of Montreal building, from where this walk was started, is at the far left distance.

above: a closer view of Dale's and Gullion's storefronts, date not known.

above: same view, Feb.3, 2009. The Gullion's space is now a restaurant bar.

above: Sept.28, 1965 - a closer view of Dale's ladies wear shop.

above: in 1920, the space at the right side of the centre building, where Dale's would later be, was occupied by Fielding and Co. The left side of the building, before it was the Metropolitan, and before it was the Hat Box, was a F.W. Woolworth Co. 5-10 and 15 Cent store. At some point in the 1930's Woolworth's moved further west up Queen St., to a location just east of the Capitol Theatre, which stood on the north-east corner of Queen St. and St. Clair Ave. To the west of Woolworth's above is a store with the name Henderson, and at the far right (east) of the photo above (where Gullion's would later be) is seen T.F. Ball Drugs, Cigars shop.

above: same building, photo date not known.

above: same view, Feb.3, 2009.

above: date unknown. Cataract Sports Hobbies and Crafts was located on Queen St., east of Gullion's.

above: same view, May 1965, the building was occupied by Logan's Dry Goods.

above: same view, on a snowy Dec.22, 2008.

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below: July, 1925, what a crowd on Queen St. in front of Niagara Falls City Hall for Old Home Week! This view looks in a north-easterly direction along Queen St.; the City Hall would be just out of view to the right (south), in front of which the crowd has gathered. The building, shown previously above as Logan's Dry Goods, is at the far left of the above photo. Next to the east are seen two stores with awnings, then on the corner is seen the Canadian Bank Of Commerce building. (It is on the north-west corner of Queen St. and Erie Ave.) At the far right (on the north-east corner of Queen and Erie) is where Rosberg's would be; the corner is not yet built up with a three-story building (as is seen directly to the north along Erie Ave.), it shows a smaller two-storey building with an awning on the corner.

below: date unknown. Same location, looking closer at the building which was seen in the previous above 1925 photo as being to the left (west) of the Canadian Bank Of Commerce building. At this time, on the left (west) is Ben's, with the striped awning, and to the east with the blue awning is Angus Jewellers.

above: same location, seen Feb.6, 2009, the 'new' facade consists of steel siding and angled windows.

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below: date not known; another view of Cataract Sports, Ben's and Angus Jewellers, this time looking along Queen St. in north-westerly direction. The west corner of the Canadian Bank Of Commerce building is seen at the far right.

above: same view, Dec.22, 2008. The old former Commerce/Hamilton Bank building is at right.

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below: Before it was the Canadian Bank Of Commerce, the building on the north-west corner of Queen St. and Erie Ave., was the Bank of Hamilton. Photo's date is unknown. Opposite this building (on the south-west of same corner) stood the (older) Niagara Falls City Hall (still does, as of Feb.2009, although it is vacant; the newer City Hall is behind it); across the street (on the north-east of same corner) was where Rosbergs Department store would be an institution for decades; and kitty-corner to this building (on the south-east side of the same corner) was the main Michigan Central railroad train station. Quite the prime location! Note streetcar tracks on a cobblestoned Queen St.

above: same view, Feb.6, 2009.

The older photos in this study series are from the Niagara Falls, Ont. Library Archives; the recent photos are by R. Bobak.

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To see the next post in this ten-part series, check out: Niagara Falls, Old storefronts on Queen St., Part Three
or
Go back to start at PART ONE

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Thanks for viewing Right In Niagara!
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Niagara should opt of OHIP, declare a medicare-monopoly-free zone

Several good health-care related letters appeared recently in our local papers: Lynn McCleary wrote in "Cutting nurses will not improve care provided by the NHS", (St. Catharines Standard, Feb.9, 2009):
"Re: NHS cutting 90 jobs,The Standard, Feb. 4.
As an RN, I am disappointed with the Niagara Health System decision to eliminate 50 nursing positions.
It is understandable that with 75 vacant positions, eliminating nursing positions may seem like an easy solution to the budget crunch. The explanation that nurses will not lose jobs, rather they will fill vacant positions or take early retirement, may be reassuring to nurses who work at the NHS but it does not reassure me that quality health-care services can be maintained in the long term -- or costs decreased in the short term.
Eliminating positions does not eliminate work. If the NHS follows other hospitals down this path, the work will be done by existing nurses at overtime rates, increasing costs. In the long term, eliminating positions threatens the nursing workforce. The health-care system is at risk because 24,000 Ontario RNs are aged 55 or older, poised to retire.
The 75 vacant positions in Niagara are an indication of things to come, when we may not be able to fill vacancies created by retiring nurses. Just when hospitals like ours in Niagara need strong leadership from the provincial government to ensure an adequate supply of nurses, what we get is provincial backtracking on commitments to create new nursing positions and pressure to balance budgets by paying the price with bigger problems down the line.
Hospitals are being forced by the province into penny wise, pound foolish actions. We should be encouraging nurses to keep working, not encouraging early retirement.
Even in tough economic times, we need to chose to support the healthcare system by ensuring an adequate nursing workforce."
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Let's remember (because McCleary doesn't bother to mention it) that it is a Liberal government which is cutting nurses in Niagara, and which also recently cut 50 million dollars from provincial nurse training!

Have we forgotten how, during the Oct.2008 federal election, certain folks, along with a more-than-willing press, got outrageously indignant about federal arts funding, where $45 million was re-allotted throughout Canada? Yes, an unreal brouhaha was made over that; yet, when Ontario's Liberal liars over at McGuinty and Co. cut $50 million (and that's only in Ontario) of promised nurse funding from their failing health-monopoly - no-one cared!!!

Good Ole Jim Bradley, St. Catharines Liberal MPP, and proud health-care monopolist-hypocrite, spent years making allegations about so-called Harris cuts, yet, it's Jimbo's own Liberals who are blatantly cutting health-care.

They are using the same old 'we-are-cutting-health-care-to-save-health-care' rhetoric which Michael Decter, Bob Rae's NDP deputy health-minister, used during Ontario's Great Socialist Darkness of the early 1990's.

This is an incomprehensible, ideologically-based conceptual contradiction: oxymoronic limited universality in tandem with a needlessly oppressive (to the point of being cruel) prohibition on private health-care, all enforced by the single-payer-monopoly-pushing state.
It's a mockery of its own intent; a false image of unaccountable promises painted with irresponsible rhetoric.

McCleary talks about "provincial backtracking"... isn't that a euphemism for the McGuinty/Caplan/Bradley gang's Liberal LIES?

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Peter Genovese wrote in "We should expect more from our health system, (St. Catharines Standard, Feb.9, 2009): "Re:160 on waiting list for home care, The Standard, Jan. 29
This article has brought up several important points regarding home-care services. The Community Care Access Centre has seen a steady increase in need for home-care services and the current fiscal year's budget can't properly fund this need.
To prevent running a deficit, a waiting list has been created, currently at 163 clients in Niagara. What will the waiting list be by March 31, the end of the fiscal year? And will this problem not compound in the next fiscal year if funding is inadequate for the service demand?
The clients who are on the waiting list are deemed low priority -- they are not surgical (hip/knee replacements). They are still clients who require exercise, balance re-training, gait aid assessments, safety assessments, home adaptive equipment assessment, etc.
How many clients on the waiting list will have to be admitted to or re-admitted to hospital due to a decrease in health status that may result from not receiving home care? What cost do these clients potentially pose to the health system?
Since the Liberal provincial government has been in power, it has raised our taxes (health-care tax) and has increased the annual health spending to about 50 per cent of the total Ontario budget. But we have waiting lists for home care, the eventual downgrading of the emergency rooms in Fort Erie and Port Colborne and many issues in this region regarding the state of our healthcare system.
We should expect more from the way our health care is funded and managed. We need to demand this from our government before the current situation turns into a health-care crisis."
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Taxes up, service down; yet patient-pawns trapped in McGuinty's health-care monopoly have no choice.

Liberals are happy. "Look at us, we are spending..." they will graciously point out, "...on your behalf! We are taxing and spending - on your behalf! We are cutting, on your behalf, to save us from having to spend more..." The logic becomes convoluted and murky.

Liberal MPP Jim Bradley can't be bothered to explain his own health monopoly's failures. Will he bother to answer Genovese's questions? Bradley continues plodding on the same old failing socialist monopoly course. It is a failing Liberal fantasy that only a BIG STATE GOVERNMENT MONOPOLY knows best how to mimic the real health-care choices of a free-market.
Ontario's Liberals didn't bother to respond to Niagara concerns about Niagara's ER/bed shortage issue: two years ago (in the St. Catharines Standard, Sept.30, 2006) Dalton McGuinty himself dismissed that his Liberals would do much about it - see: Jim "Crackpot" Bradley's Liberal realism.



Genovese's concerns might have been different now had McGuinty and Bradley got off their butts two years ago and actually did something other than make soothing, grandiose 'Big Brother' rhetorical health-care pronouncements, without substance or any attached responsibility. Hey - SO WHAT if some patient dies waiting in a McGuinty-underfunded ER, or sits all day in an unchanged diaper in a Liberal underfunded nursing home? McGuinty is held harmless! MPP Jim Bradley, unbelievably, suddenly has nothing to do with health-care!!

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Pat Scholfield wrote in "NHS helped create problem with ALC patient overload", (Niagara This Week, Feb.6, 2009):
"In response to the article in The Leader that stated a new report adds weight to the argument by the Niagara Health System that people who have no business being in a hospital are clogging up chronic care beds which leads to lengthy delays in getting treated at hospital emergency rooms:
Does the NHS leadership remember several times over the past few years they have reduced beds as a cost saving measure, while at the same time telling us it would not affect service?
On March 29, 2006, former NHS chair Paul Leon told us bed closures don't mean service reductions. This article notes a year ago the health system originally targeted 60 beds for closure at its three largest hospitals throughout Niagara as part of its plans to cut $19 million in spending. "The standards are being maintained. No services are being cut and we're going to meet our targeted balanced budget by 2007," Leon said.
Around the same time, recently resigned NHS Chief of Staff Dr. William Schragge stated, "Beds do not equal service. The number of inpatient beds is no longer an accurate reading of health-care delivery. In fact, we have seen an overall increase in health-care delivery with 60 fewer beds across the system."
Why is the NHS closing hospital beds until we find a workable solution for these alternate level of care patients, especially when the ALC patients across Niagara are nearly double the provincial average and when bed shortage is such a huge problem?
To a layman like myself, it appears the NHS has implemented bed closing measures which have helped to create the ER backlog monster we are currently experiencing in Niagara."
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... and you know, if you ask Liberal MPP Jim Bradley (who's not a layman, he's a long-time Liberal supporter of state-run monopoly health-care) these questions, a smug Bradley won't bother to answer them! Yet his Liberals have been running the show for five years!

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Margaret Ferland wrote in "Why do we need centres of excellence?" (Niagara This Week, Feb.6, 2009):

"The Niagara Health System's problems and plans are becoming a major problem for taxpayers.
The NHS would like us to believe we are going to benefit from the centres of excellence for ophthalmology and urology. The fact is Welland has always had excellent ophthalmologists and urologists on staff, and that was never a problem.
Why do we need a centre of excellence? To entice people from other areas?
The fact is we need services we use on a daily basis, like pediatrics, obstetrics and psychiatry, which the NHS has so generously given to St. Catharines. We are expected to share the taxes for this, and to add insult to injury, it is contingent upon a transit system being built and maintained in seven municipalities.
The NHS is going to have to do more than hire a couple of public relations experts and a few full-page ads in the local newspapers to convince the taxpayers that this is cost-effective, let alone makes any common sense."

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Common-sense... oh, now there's a phrase that Liberal hack Jim Bradley just loves to deride! Bradley's Liberals don't understand common-sense; it's all bans and statism with these clowns. Bradley's Liberals are hiding from independent scrutiny of their health-care monopoly, and, of their accompanying claims regarding its performance. There is no transparent oversight in this rat's nest of ideological heath-care Liberalism gone wildly askew. Bizarrely, now somehow the spectre of "public transit" (another black-hole for public funds) is entering the hospital-cuts debate; this when Good Ole Jim Bradley, Mr. GO-PROMISER (and, now the Transportation Minister, for cryin' out loud) has done done flicking NOTHING regarding GO train service to Niagara! (Because, strangely, that TOO is contingent upon some ephemeral prerequisite regional system... and on it goes... a perennial, eternal make-work project, keeping earnest, eager Liberal statists busily planning to fix the problems created by earlier eager, earnest Liberal statists...)
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Anne Kranics wrote in "The bottom line for Fort Erie residents" (Niagara This Week, Feb.6, 2009):

"As you sit in your offices and homes with the full knowledge that you are safe and within life and death help may I remind you of our bottom line:
1. We had a well run hospital with the services that met our needs and ran in the black.
2. You (Phantoms from the government, LHIN. NHS, HIP etc.) stripped our hospital to meet your needs without consultation or notification to the taxpayers.
3. These powers that be continued on the path of meetings to decide our fate without acceptable feedback to the public.
4. After the unfair removal of equipment and services we were told that we've been functioning like this for a long time. No kidding, what choice did we have?
5. Since we have left things in your hands , you have decimated our life line and now are saying "See, you don't have what's necessary to be a hospital so we'll have to take that designation away!!" Please, do not do that!
6.The new St. Catharines hospital will not meet our needs for reasons given many times over.
7. Dr. Kitts, has not been as generous to our community as he has to his own and Mr. McGuinty's - as they have hospitals in their areas - how far is Mr. Caplan from his hospital? You know that Fort Erie is at the end of the line and we have taken care of ourselves nicely.
These people do not live here and will not suffer the consequences of shutting our hospital down! Being touted an expert and telling others what's good for them without having to live in the environment they create is barbaric and uncivilized!
8. Our lives are in your hands and you are responsible for your decisions.You are at a point that you can do the civilized thing and keep our hospital open! We are at your mercy and ask you to do the right the right thing. Do not leave us with nothing. We deserve better!"
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I ask what St. Catharines MPP Liberal Jim Bradley has to say in response to Ms. Kranics? Apparently, Good Ole Jim doesn't feel it is necessary for him to respond to public questions about the blowback to residents and to patients of his Liberal-government-monopoly's high-handed health-care edicts.
And, hey, who cares about Fort Erie, anyhow, that's Liberal MPP Kim Craitor's embarrassing political pickle, isn't it? Bradley can smugly leave himself out of it!
Health Minister David Caplan couldn't give a hoot either, as we've just recently seen. Maybe the Great Lying McGuinty will come calling to Fort Erie for votes, just before the next election!!

Remember how a smirking McGuinty turned and walked away from that cancer patient - Mike Brady - during the 2007 Ontario election campaign, disputing the man's claim that McGuinty wasn't doing enough for him?!
Yeah, well, McGuinty's doing the same walk-away from Fort Erie today. Tomorrow, it'll be a hospital near you. And there is nowhere else to turn to in this Liberal single-payer health-care monopoly.
This is not a red-herring question about WHERE a hospital is; this is an elemental question about WHAT our "hospital system" "is".
Niagara's mayors, the councillors, the Region... who has done anything to successfully challenge the Liberals' slickly-named "centres of excellence" health-care cutbacks? They've all hit the McGuinty ideological wall. It's out of our jurisdiction, they say.
(Maybe the Regional government, with the support of Niagara's mayors, can challenge McGuinty's demogogic monopolistic health-care practices - but fat chance of that, because a lot of Niagara's mayors are loyal Liberal hacks, as well - all part of the same problem...).
How about declaring Niagara a medicare-free zone?
Let a bankrupt, deficit-ridden McGuinty try to shut that down.
Encourage private medical investment.
Fight Liberal Healthcare Duplicity.
Declare the intention that Niagara will secede from sole reliance on McGuinty's OHIP health-monopoly, and will pursue its own health care policy, and that in the interim, Niagarans should be refunded their health-care expenses directly from the federal government, thereby correspondingly not allowing it to reach McGuinty's mitts. That is the only message McGuintyites will understand, when they are deprived of expected health-care money which they assume is theirs.
If Niagara is to be callously used by McGuinty as a test-case for his monopoly cuts, Niagara should respond by declaring this area an OHIP-free test zone, and by asking the federal government for emergency protection from the McGuinty majority-government's health schemes.
McGuinty should not possess carte-blanche access to our health-care dollars. Niagara Region could negotiate a health care plan under different scenarios on behalf of some 450,000 people with other invited providers; anything which forced McGuintyite monopolists to have no choice but compete for their own funding, or else be deprived of health-cash, would be a good thing. Utilize the expertise of neighbouring Buffalo health care facilities. Niagara could create and fund its own insurance plan; not, though, as just another freshly-minted replicant mini-monopoly, but as an open option, patient payer/provider choice system.
It is acknowledged that health care is not free.
Let consumers - not presumptive McGuintyites [or yellow-shirted socialist NDPeer's] - decide how to spend their own health dollars. Niagarans should be allowed to opt out of the McGuinty government's monopoly-health schemes.
Given that the McCreith/Holmes health-care charter case against McGuinty's Ontario Liberals is still looming at the Supreme Court, now is the time to seriously consider implementing an honest, fair, realistic health strategy that does not leave the participant-resident-patient-stakeholders at the mercy of evasive, statist, bait-and-switch McGuinty-monopolist promises. A hybrid approach might as well be tried here, in an orderly manner.
We deserve better than to be reduced to pleading - as Kranics sadly does - with these deaf, arrogant Liberals. (And when U.S. President Obama visits Canada, let him take into consideration the damage that socialized state-run monopoly medicine has done in Ontario. Americans shouldn't covet Canada's failing universal-health-care system. There are certainly other templates better than Ontario's to look at.)
It's time to draw a line in the sand over the Liberal's sacrificial abandonment of Fort Erie.
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Let's fast forward to Nov.17, 2014 - I was listening to the Jim Richards Showgram on Toronto's NewsTalk 1010 (the old CFRB), where host Jimberley was interviewing a guest, Dr. Brett Belchetz, regarding the shortage of medical pathologists on Ontario.
It was a great interview, and I wish that I could find a link to it on the NewsTalk 1010 website, or to this Nov.17th afternoon podcast, but it was not listed on the Showgram's web page. It would be an interesting interview for folks to listen to.
Amongst the topics discussed, I recall the doctor mentioning a recent Commonwealth Fund study, which rated Canada's health system as the SECOND WORST in the developed (not 'developing'!) world... and him mentioning that for Canadians, or Ontarians, going to nearby American cities such as Buffalo was certainly an option to get faster biopsy results... again: this is the same stuff I had written about in Liberal Health Care Duplicity SEVEN years ago!!! It's like the health care disaster in Ontario created by monopoly-pushing hacks such as St.Catharines MPP Jim Bradley and his Liberals has no end of horror.
There's an excellent article (one of many) by Dr. Brett Belchetz in the Huffington Post, Jun.27, 2014.
To top it off, I was watching TVO on Nov.24, 2014, in the evening, and who was there as a panelist but another ghoul from the past: old Michael 'Rae Day' Decter, the pathetic former deputy health minister - and HEALTH CARE CUTTER - under socialist Ontario premier Bob Rae. To believe that this piece of work still prattles his tales twenty years after the horrors which he and Rae's NDP perpetrated, is sickening.  
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Niagara Falls Then and Now: Old Storefronts on Queen St. (Part 1 of 10)

This ten-part series of posts walks eastward along the north-side of Queen St., in Niagara Falls, Ontario, starting from Buckley Ave. towards St. Lawrence Ave. Click on photos to enlarge!*
below: Looking at the north-east corner of Buckley Ave. and Queen St. in Niagara Falls Ont., as it was on Oct.4, 1964. On the corner at left is the Old Vienna bakery, with its windows soaped, possibly moving out; next to the right (east) is Kindy's Furs; then Brocher's Pastry Shop at right.
above: Oct.4, 1964 - Brocher's is at left, then El Win Tiny Togs, then at right Brock's Music and Toyland, with a neon sign over the sidewalk.

above: still looking north-east along Queen St., in May 1965 - the corner bakery shop is still vacant; next store east is Kindy's; then Brocher's Pastry Shop; next to it is El Win Tiny Togs; next to the east at the far right is Brock's. On the rooftop of the next building (to the east of Brock's) is a large billboard ad for R.C. Young Realty and Insurance.

Above: date unknown; Kindy's is at the left, Brocher's Pastries has moved, El Win has moved, Brock's is at the right.

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Below: date unknown; closer view of Brock's Records and Toys, with its neon sign now gone.
above: Dec.22, 2008 - same building where Brock's Records and Toys had once been.
above: Apr.16, 2009 - same view, facade being painted white; the shingle siding has been removed, and the brick-arched side doorway can be seen again. above: Apr.17, 2009 - same view, a final coat of sky-blue paint now covers the brick storefront

above: same view, Aug.7, 2009 - a yellow awning, new black-lettered sign and trim added

above: Feb.8, 2009 - the same row of storefronts, standing on the north-east corner of Buckley Ave. and Queen St.

above: Sept.28, 1965 - continuing east along Queen St. is the Frontier business equipment store; upstairs were the offices of R.C.Young Realty and Insurance. To the left (west) was Brock's Records. To the right was a Sherwin Williams paint store.

above: same view, Feb.9, 2009

above: Oct.4, 64 - continuing east, Frontier is seen at the far left; next was Allemang's Sherwin Williams Paints, then R. Greco Tailors. Upstairs were the law offices of Logan and Knight.

above: same location, Dec.22, 2008.

above: Oct.4, 1964 - continuing eastward along Queen St., next to the right (east) from R. Greco Tailors is The Cinderella Shoppe; to the far right is a corner of the Mayflower Restaurant.

above: same location, Dec.22, 2008; The Cinderella Shoppe was once where the centre building, now with two floors, is seen.

above: Oct.4, 1964 - The Cinderella Shoppe is at the far left (west); next is the Mayflower Restaurant; next is Tom's Linens, seen with the house still behind it on whose front yard the store was built; and at the far right is the corner of Dag's Meats.

above: Dec.22, 2008 - same location. The gable of the home behind what used to be Tom's Linens can still be seen. Dag's Meats is long gone. To the left, atop its roof, beside today's satellite dishes, can be seen another iconic remnant of old Queen St. - the now-tattered and rusty metal stylized billowing sails, which once beckoned hungry landlubbers to the old Mayflower Restaurant.

above: Sept. 1966 - still looking at the same location; at the far right, Dag's had fresh sirloin steaks on sale for 89 cents a pound; Tom's had a fresh 'oriental-style' font on their store sign; the Mayflower Restaurant's sails are fronted by yet another sign - this one was hanging over the sidewalk, advertising corned beef on rye in glorious neon! Can it get any better?

above: Sept. 1977 - same view, eleven years later. The Mayflower has a new modernized facade, which now carries over to cover the old Tom's signage. Dag's Meats is still at the right (now without the round Coke sign which had been on the right-hand side of their sign, where the brackets are seen.)

above: same view, Feb.8, 2009. Where Dag's once was at the right, is vacant.

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below: Jun.29, 2009 - the former Dag's is now occupied by Voices, an Aboriginal arts and gifts shop.

below: Oct.4, 1964 - at the north-west corner of Queen St. and St. Lawrence was Oscar's Italian Imports, with the two Pepsi signs. Dag's Meat Market, with the Coke sign, is at the left.

above: same view on Mar.3, 2009 - the former Oscar's, now with a shallow gable roof, sits quietly curtained on the corner, with the two Pepsi signs long gone.

At the far right distance is the corner of Park St. and St. Lawrence Ave., where a house had recently been torn down during the week of Feb.16-20, 2009. (see: Niagara Falls Then and Now: house lost on Park Lane ) The mound of earth seen in was trucked in to fill the basement excavation after the house was demolished.

Recent photos by R. Bobak, older photos from Niagara Falls Ont. Library Archives (NFLA)
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For the next post in this ten-part series on old downtown Niagara Falls, Ont., see: Old storefronts on Queen St., Part Two
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