Keeping the spirit of Eaton’s alive Mementoes hark back to heyday of Portage Avenue’s once-regal retailer By: David Sanderson Posted: 12:32 PM CDT Friday, Aug. 16, 2024

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/08/2024 (749 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The general rule of thumb when it comes to online sales platforms such as Kijiji is to never, ever pay for an item until it’s in your hot little hands.

Except if you’re Corey Quintaine, a Winnipegger who seeks out items associated with bygone retail giant Eaton’s, rules are definitely made to be broken.

In early June, Quintaine received a message from a friend about a fresh post on Facebook Marketplace he might be interested in. That turned out to be the understatement of the week.

The advertised article was a decades-old Plexiglas Eaton’s sign from the downtown Winnipeg emporium that first opened in 1905, and was razed 97 years later to pave the way for what is presently Canada Life Centre.

Quintaine reached out immediately, letting the seller know he would gleefully e-transfer the full asking price in advance, sight unseen.

The two of them got together in a random parking lot a few hours later (rule No. 2: avoid meeting in unsecured locations for transactions).

There, Quintaine took possession of his newest treasure, which he was told had been stored in a garage for years, after being rescued from the landfill by a member of the former eight-storey building’s demolition crew.

“It doesn’t weigh very much, just a couple of pounds, but it’s definitely a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be,” Quintaine says, showing off the weathered placard, which measures just over two metres long and about a half-metre wide.

“I’m still not 100 per cent sure how to display it properly, but don’t worry, I’ll figure that out in good time.”

Quintaine grew up in Brandon, where the holiday season meant an annual family visit to the Rosser Avenue Eaton’s department store, now the dual home of the Brandon Downtown Library and Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba.

“There was a pretend robot in the toy section with a slot for letters to Santa,” Quintaine recalls, relaxing in his spacious two-level condo, which he shares with his partner and their two cats.

“Santa always wrote back, and at the bottom of every letter was a stamp with the Eaton’s logo.”

Quintaine, who also has fond memories of childhood trips to Winnipeg’s flagship Eaton’s location (“so big, so cool… the be-all and end-all of shopping, really”), was 20 years old in 1995 when he applied for a display manager position at the Brandon outlet.

The person interviewing him for the job asked to see his portfolio. Oops, he’d forgotten it at home, came his reply, but he would be sure to drop it off the following morning.

“The thing was, I didn’t actually have (a portfolio) but since I’d long been fascinated by retail and display, what I did have were some old mannequins that I dressed up in my mother’s clothes and took photos of,” he says, chuckling at his youthful bravado.

“I guess it worked because when the person they ended up hiring went on maternity leave, they called to ask if I was still interested. I ended up sticking with the store until it closed in 1999, along with the other Eaton’s stores across the country.”

Quintaine wasn’t collecting Eaton’s paraphernalia in earnest yet when his place of work held a giant liquidation sale, during which everything from fixtures to shelving to display dummies was up for grabs.

Nevertheless, he purchased a few pieces as mementoes of his career there, which he boxed and brought with him to Winnipeg in 2000, when he moved to the city to study Creative Communications at Red River College Polytechnic.

Let him think about that for a sec, he responds, after being asked if there was a specific keepsake that kick-started his collecting ways into high gear.

Maybe it was a set of intact tin ceiling tiles he scooped up 15 or so years ago that were being sold as a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity.

Or perhaps it was a commemorative red brick that, like the tiles, had also been salvaged from the Portage Avenue landmark, nicknamed “the Big Store” in its heyday.

In any event, by 2010 he was actively amassing tea cups, scale-model delivery vans, keychains… even the odd hat box, so long as it carried a distinctive, blue-and-white Eaton’s insignia. (Yes, he hung onto his personal name tags from when he was employed at the store.)

It’s not as if he keeps “anything-and-everything Eaton’s,” he stresses, although a pristine 35-mm film reel from 1967 titled Eaton’s Presents: How Do You Get to Christmas Land? seems to belie that point. You know, considering he doesn’t own a movie projector.

By and large, though, most of what he has were gifts from friends who came across old shopping bags or Christmas-tree ornaments while cleaning out their parents’ places. Or the odd time somebody hears through the grapevine he’s doing his part to keep the spirit of Eaton’s alive, one yellowed sales flyer at a time, and reaches out to say they have a certain something for him.

Rarely do those transactions involve money, he mentions; for the most part, it’s people who never had the heart to throw this or that away, and are overjoyed it’s off to a good home.

“It’s often said there’s a fine line between collecting and hoarding,” he goes on, pointing out a shelf devoted almost entirely to Punkinhead, Eaton’s uber-popular bear mascot that was introduced in 1948, and whose image graced the likes of high chairs, dish-ware, bath towels and slippers into the early ’90s.

“The way I look at it, as long as it doesn’t take over too much space and is manageable, then it’s OK.”

“I’m still not 100 per cent sure how to display it properly, but don’t worry, I’ll figure that out in good time.”–Corey Quintaine, on his giant Eaton’s sign

Mississauga, Ont., resident and fellow Eaton’s aficionado Dave Bartlett, 78, traces his personal affection for the retail chain to his grandparents’ home in rural Newfoundland.

He recalls a double outhouse on their property where Eaton’s catalogues were perpetually placed for those looking for something to peruse while conducting their, uh, business.

Bartlett was collecting glass milk bottles about 15 years ago when he started to notice century-old ones marked with a Timothy E. Eaton brand on the underside.

Meanwhile, his wife was collecting china, and darned if a lot of the pieces she was returning home with didn’t carry a similar mark.

Hmm, he began to wonder; just how much Eaton’s merch is out there?

Dozens upon dozens of artifacts later, Bartlett now offers an ultra-informative Powerpoint presentation entirely revolving around Eaton’s, all the way back to when Irish immigrant Timothy Eaton founded a dry-goods and haberdashery business in Toronto in 1869.

During the hour-long sessions, which the 78-year-old retiree does on a volunteer basis for historical societies and antiques clubs throughout southern Ontario, he also reserves time for show-and-tell, using items from his personal cache.

“I don’t have a lot of the bigger stuff. I’m more interested in things that are somewhat unique — Eaton’s medicine bottles, for example — and the stories associated with them,” Bartlett says when reached at home.

“For instance, I have a shirt that once belonged to an Eaton’s delivery driver that I picked up at auction, and I also have some marked bus tickets, from a period when Greyhound had a specific route transporting shoppers from city to city, to hit one Eaton’s store after another.”

Calling Eaton’s the Amazon of its time, Bartlett says he is forever fascinated by its long, colourful narrative, as are the people, mostly seniors, who attend his get-togethers.

His favourite yarn, one he tells occasionally as part of a series called “So you think you know Eaton’s?” goes to a woman who purchased fishing worms from Eaton’s mail-order department in the 1940s and ’50s.

At a certain point she returned a batch of specimens, demanding her money back owing to the fact she wasn’t getting any bites.

“If you can believe it, the store gave her a full refund,” says Bartlett, who also belongs to a 2,500-member Facebook group wholly dedicated to Eaton’s iconic catalogues, which were issued seasonally from 1884 to 1976.

Back at Quintaine’s abode, the shopping centre marketing manager notes if there is one relic out there he would most love to add to his assortment, it would be a present he was 15 years shy of earning on his own.

“There was a watch people were given upon their 20th anniversary with Eaton’s. It was made with all Rolex parts and yeah, that would really be something to have,” he says.

Also, if True North Sports and Entertainment ever needs more space on Canada Life Centre’s second-floor concourse, he would be more than willing to take the bronze Timothy E. Eaton statue off its hands.

He can’t say for sure how he’d get it and its famous left shoe, which passers-by continue to rub for luck to this day, up six flights of stairs but hey, that’s a question for another day, he cracks.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

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