Last Christmas rush for landmark Sears
Paul Wilson
The Hamilton Spectator
(Dec 12, 2007)
"I admire your economic courage and daring in putting up a store like this in this end of the city and wish you success," said Mayor Lloyd Jackson.
"I feel this store and its methods of merchandising will make a great contribution to Hamilton."
With those words, the mayor declared the new Simpsons-Sears at Barton and Kenilworth officially open.
It was Nov. 17, 1954, and they needed nearly 50 city and special police to control the traffic and the crowds. It wasn't just the free balloons and 66-cent silk stockings. People were curious, because Hamilton had never seen a store like this. It was huge, 200,000 square feet on two floors, one of the biggest stores built in Canada since the war.
And it wasn't downtown. This was the first of the suburban stores, and it came with 1,500 parking spaces and its own gas station, ready to serve 14 cars.
Inside the air-conditioned premises, with 52 strategically-placed speakers playing music and announcing specials, there was a beauty salon, hearing aid and optical departments, restaurant, rifle and shotgun counter, 12 complete room displays in the furniture department, a Christmas Kiddieland with merry-go-round, fish pond, racing cars and a CNR Flyer miniature train.
It was just the year before that Simpsons-Sears had been formed and this was its first big U.S.-style store in Eastern Canada.
"We have great confidence in Hamilton," said president E.G. Burton on opening day, "or we would not have spent several million dollars on this store and three million on the merchandise to stock it."
Half a century later, what confidence does Sears have in Hamilton?
We don't know yet, but this looks to be the store's last Christmas. Several months ago, Sears Canada (70 per cent owned by Sears Roebuck of the U.S.) sold the building to the parties redeveloping Centre Mall. They say the store is to come down sometime in 2008.
Centre Mall, which rose up to the immediate west of Sears, is coming down, too, and big-box stores will begin to fill that acreage. So far, the lineup is pretty much players already on site, like Shoppers Drug Mart, Zellers, Canadian Tire.
Sears Canada head office is only saying that they "plan to relocate in the Hamilton market."
That sure sounds as though they're leaving the corner. If so, Centre Mall still needs a big draw. Zellers and Canadian Tire are fine, but that Sears is the only outlet in the lower city.
Centre Mall Sears store manager Cathie Weadick says she's told her people they will have jobs and they won't have far to go to them. The new store is sure to be on one floor and you'll be able to push a shopping cart through it.
And it probably won't be in a building that Sears owns. The big stores prefer to be tenants today.
But back in 1954, Simpsons-Sears (the Simpsons part of the name drifted away in the '70s) was proud to have a building of its own. The company erected and stocked it in seven months.
Weadick started her career here 32 years ago and returned as store manager two years ago. Her office is the original, a large, richly panelled space, complete with conference table that bears cigarette scars from a time when most meetings were smoky.
She has a staff of about 400. In 1954, there were twice that number. Beyond the sales floor, Weadick shows us where many of them worked. Here on the second floor is the big empty space that was home to the advertising department. That's centralized elsewhere now. Same for the buying department, credit, catalogue, accounting, display, printing.
We travel down the original Otis escalator. The store hoped it would last to the end, but it was clunking so dramatically this fall that they had to shut it down for six weeks. The repair bill was nearly $100,000 and that magnificent relic, with aqua-coloured side panels, will be of no use in the new place.
Marge Hannigan, 83, doesn't ride the escalator. Daughter Cheryl is pushing her over to a freight elevator so they can get to second-floor china.
Marge started working at the very beginning, one of 5,000 applicants.
She was a single mother, raising Cheryl, and stayed with Sears 33 years. For awhile, her grandchildren believed she owned Sears.
She will return next Thursday. There, in the staff cafeteria, she'll be served a Christmas banquet with all the trimmings. There will be draws, the managers will sing some carols and, because this is the last Christmas party on site, there may be a gift -- perhaps an inscribed tree ornament.
Marge Hannigan looks forward to the event every year, but this one will be hard. "I'm so sick about it I could cry," she says.
"This store was my bread and butter."
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