If You Find a Place Called Main Street, Please Let Me Know
Every Friday night as a young child, we would walk up Albert Street to make our way to the Main Street of Cowansville, Quebec. Everyone was there with smiles on their faces and you could hear the sounds of a jazz band playing from the Hotel. There were clothing stores filled to capacity with people purchasing things and you could see men in haberdasheries standing on small stools being fitted with pants.
We would stop and look carefully in the shoe store window and then make our way down to the hat store. Their verandah was yellow and white with many gorgeous hats in the window. I watched my mother point at one and saw my father tell her to go buy it.
Inside it smelled of lilacs and I would sit on one of the fabric covered benches and watch everyone try on hats. The women who worked in the store seemed like they were right out of the fashion magazines and their hair was coiffed in the latest styles.
I remember the hat that my mother bought that day and watched the daisy trimmed straw hat being carefully wrapped up in tissue and then place in a brown paper bag. The cookie store was next and I was allowed to buy 3 cookies covered in peppermint icing that had chocolate drizzle on them. I never touched them until I got home as I wanted to savour every bite.
After my mother died my father would take me up to Brault’s drugstore every Saturday night where I was allowed to purchase one magazine and a chocolate bar. My father never really talked to me much as he was always busy but this brief time that we spent together each week is something I will always remember.
He would never understand the teen magazines that I bought but figured it was useless to argue with me about considering another choice. Sometimes he brought me to the Blue Bird Restaurant where we would have a chocolate milkshake and my father would talk non stop to the owner. They would talk about the fire that happened years ago and destroyed most of the street and how chain stores were coming in and might possibly ruin the smaller businesses.
One of those chain stores was Canadian Tire and when it opened there was a line up that stretched down the street and around the corner. They had sent everyone catalogs beforehand and everyone wanted to see all the good deals they professed to have. The kids got a free sucker and balloons and I remember the man that owned the hardware store across the street standing in his doorway with a huge scowl.
Main Street was the place I bought my first lipstick and eyeliner. I was in seventh heaven when pantyhose came to town and was proudly displayed in the Continental store window. That was the same store that I bought my first 45 RPM’s and actually one day I was dared to steal one by my friends – that was the first and last time I ever pulled that stunt. The fact that it was Shelley Fabares’ “Johnny Angel” was not really the perfect thing to put between your looseleaf binder with the name angel in the title.
As I got older and moved away things changed. They erected a shopping center and an A & P came to town shutting the Dominion store down quickly. People opted to go into the air conditioned mall rather that putter along a dying street. The Princess Theatre no longer had a full house and it only held remembrances of watching Gone with the Wind and The Sound of Music with my grandmother. English owned business signs gradually changed to French and the hotel became a senior’s home. No longer did Bonneau’s grocery store stand on the corner and the street now held French bakeries and a cafe that sold exotic waffles with strawberries and cream.
There was no family left to complain to about the changes and no one really remembered the old stores anyways. The Bank of Montreal shut down and became a restaurant and all you could smell was retail death in the air.
The evolution of retail has hit most small towns; from Main Street to shopping malls and then on to big box stores. No one remembers when a trip to the Main Street was a big deal and now frozen food and big screen TV’s have replaced home made cookies, theatres, and shoe stores. Now only floral displays with donated benches are many a town’s dream of hoping to attract customers that might remember what it once used to be.
If over 8000 people can show up to a Main Street festivity then why can’t they shop there every darn day? Support your local downtown area! You might be surprised what you might find…
Photo of Cowansville Quebec, circa 1960 from Facebook’s La Ville de Cowansville
I miss my little town of ma belle province!
Text and Images by Linda Knight Seccaspina 2011
Images of Carleton Place, Ontario/ July 30th, 2011
If you listen closely you can hear someone call out my name in the end. So much for shooting a video in a crowd.:)
lindaseccaspina 