‘Love at first strike’ Vintage matches spark burning passion for West Broadway phillumenist By: David Sanderson Posted: 2:00 AM CDT Saturday, Jun. 13, 2026

Caution: flammable material.

Ed Brassard of Seattle, Wash., holds the Guinness World Record for the largest assortment of matchbook covers — 3.2 million and counting.

According to a newspaper article published in Spokane, Washington’s the Spokesman-Review, Brassard was a teenager when his mother discovered a half-dozen matchbooks in his dresser drawer. She demanded an explanation and, not wanting to divulge that he’d been experimenting with cigarettes, Brassard informed her that they were part of a budding collection. Not only did his mother buy the story, she commenced bringing matchbooks home for him from local restaurants and shops, sparking what turned into a record-breaking pastime.

West Broadway resident Nicole McLennan doesn’t have anywhere near the number of matchbooks as Brassard but like her fellow phillumenist — the term given to people who keep match-related paraphernalia — she also took up the hobby at a young age.

“I was 13 when I developed an interest in old ephemera. Matchbooks — with their bold images and creative lettering — appealed to me most of all,” says McLennan.

The 31-year-old has since turned her passion into a business, by marketing multi-coloured wooden matches artfully arranged inside vintage glass bottles under the banner Match Witch, a nod to her favourite TV show Bewitched, which ran from 1964 to 1972 and starred Elizabeth Montgomery as a suburban housewife with otherworldly powers. She laughs, revealing that until she launched Match Witch four years ago, her parents were unaware her childhood bedroom was an inferno waiting to happen.

“I was responsible for cleaning my own room so no, they didn’t know there were literally thousands of matches in there at any one time,” she says. “At first my dad was like ‘You collected what?’ Now he’s more of the attitude, ‘You sell matches in bottles and people pay you how much?’”

Matchbooks-as-advertising tools were ubiquitous in the first half of the 20th century. They fell out of favour in the early 1970s, primarily due to anti-smoking campaigns coupled with — “Flick my BIC” — the invention of the disposable lighter.

McLennan was still in junior high school when she started searching websites such as Kijiji on a near-weekly basis to see if any matchbooks were up for grabs. Quite often when she was picking up a fresh batch, the seller would hand her a bag filled with loose, strike-anywhere matches for free, explaining they didn’t have any use for them.

Every once in a while, she’d be on the receiving end of matches boasting different-coloured tips than the standard red. She began making what she calls match bouquets, by combining black-, white- and blue-tipped matches in sugar bowls, vases or whatever other empty vessels she could find in her parents’ cupboards. She’d show her creations off to friends who’d invariably ask her to fashion one for them too.

“To make a long story short, I eventually ran out of loose matches, not to mention things to put them in, which led me down a couple of rabbit holes to keep going,” she says.

Displeased with the durability of matches she was buying at dollar stores, which often splintered when she cut them down to size to fit a specific container, she went online seeking better options. She discovered a husband-and-wife team in Lithuania that operates an enterprise peddling high-quality matches made of ash wood in a variety of sizes and shades. She placed an initial order for 500 specimens, ones with tips advertised as being banana-yellow, salad-green, peach-orange and lavender-grey in colour.

“And because the matches they sent me were so attractive, I started keeping an eye out for special receptacles to display them in,” she continues. “That’s how I met a couple of guys I call my ‘bottle boys,’ who specialize in antique apothecary bottles, many of which were mudlarked from the banks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, before being cleaned and polished. Now I had everything I needed to continue.”

McLennan took a break from matches after graduating from Vincent Massey Collegiate. She spent a year with the Canadian Army Reserves before studying massage therapy, her occupation since 2017. When COVID-19 made it difficult to practise six years ago, she got back into her hobby “big-time,” she says.

McLennan had previously been encouraged by friends to try selling her match-filled bottles, which feature a glued-on striking pad on the underside in case buyers want to use the contents for their intended purpose. She finally heeded their advice in the summer of 2023, when Match Witch made its official debut at a pop-up market in the Wolseley area.

She nearly sold out that weekend, and again a few months later at the Winnipeg Punk Rock Flea Market. She partially credits her outgoing personality for her sales numbers.

“The thing is, when you stop at my table it becomes an instant 15-minute conversation. I tell the whole story of falling in love with matches as a kid, et cetera, et cetera, till they’re probably at the point where they buy my stuff as a way to finally leave,” she said with a chuckle, adding she continues to source new matches from Europe, as many as 2,000 per order.

Chelsea McKee-Trenchard is the owner of Raven’s End Books at 1859 Portage Ave. McKee-Trenchard’s horror-based shop is one of a handful of locales in the city, including Bear Face General Store on Osborne Street, that carries McLennan’s wares on a consignment basis.

“Ever since we opened in 2024, we’ve done weekend vendor events where vendors approach us, asking to set up inside our shop,” says McKee-Trenchard. “Nicole was one of those people and I was so impressed with her passion when it came to matches that a short while later, I asked if she’d like us to carry her products on a full-time basis.”

Last summer, McKee-Trenchard enlisted McLennan to conduct a workshop at Raven’s End, teaching interested parties how to make their own match bouquets for bottles or jars they brought along for the occasion.

“It’s a lot harder to make them look nice than it would appear — there’s definitely some skill involved — and we’ve been asked to bring her back again, which we’ll probably do in short order,” she says. “Some people buy them for the bottle, others for the matches inside, but everyone agrees they’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

Despite her success thus far, McLennan, who recently added matches stored in vintage tobacco boxes and Kodak film canisters to her arsenal, isn’t under the illusion Match Witch is going to make her rich. As long as she is able to partially fund her continuing interest in all things matches, she’ll have attained her goal, she says.

“If I do have one dream, it would be to have my own general store, with a shelf in the corner reserved for my match bouquets. My motto is ‘love at first strike’ and after 18 years, I’m happy to say that’s still the case.”

This weekend, Match Witch will be on site at Pollock’s Hardware Co-op at 1407 Main St., as part of a pop-up event featuring local artisans.

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