No bones about it, Murray’s dialed in

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This article was published 15/09/2022 (1088 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You might not get a pizza, but you could reach a mayoral candidate if you call 444-4444 these days.

Glen Murray’s campaign office general number is 204-444-4444, but, for Winnipeggers of a certain age, that number is seared into their brains like a pizza crust on a pan. It was the hotline to order a pizza from Mr. Bones, until it closed in the early 2000s.

Harold Brazil is now an emergency room nurse, and a recently minted real estate agent with Keller Williams Real Estate Services. Back in 1989, he was a 19-year-old manager at the local outlet of an international pizza franchise that had moved into Canada.

“I was a manager at Domino’s,” Brazil said on Thursday. “I ran their first outlet in Canada.

“But then I thought, if they can do this, why can’t I?”

So Brazil put financing together and opened his first Mr. Bones. That’s when he got his unique phone number.

About 15 years later, after taking thousands of phone calls on that number, and slinging thousands of pizzas, Brazil decided to become a nurse and close the franchise.

By the time Brazil got the pizza itch again in 2013, and opened an outlet on McPhillips Street, you could say the knee bone was no longer connected to the phone bone. He couldn’t get his old number back because it had been taken. With young kids, and his nursing job, he decided to close again in 2019.

So, who had the former Mr. Bones phone number?

This might hit your funny bone, but it is actually owned by a competitor of Mr. Bones — the Pizza Hotline franchise — which has its own ubiquitous phone number (204-222-2222).

No surprise, Pizza Hotline owner Jerry Cianflone supports Murray’s mayoral campaign, so he lent him the phone line.

“When I decided to run, (Cianflone) said, ‘Have I got a phone number for you,’” Murray said in the midst of a busy campaign schedule Thursday. “He said he would hand it to me for the campaign. It’s kind of cool.

“I called 444 myself way back in the day.”

Murray said he doesn’t know if people are joking, but his campaign staff has fielded an inordinate number of calls for pizzas.

“I’m not sure if it is tongue in cheek, but they are asking for Mr. Bones and trying to order a pizza,” he said laughing.

“I’m sure (Brazil) wishes he had the number back.”

Cianflone said he had forgotten about the phone number — his company owns several phone numbers with the same digits — but when he saw Murray’s election website was using Glen4wpg, he thought it was a match made in pizza heaven.

“I thought this was sweet — the fours in the phone number tie into that,” he said.

As to whether he would be willing to give the number back to Mr. Bones, well those bones won’t be rattled.

“Thanks for asking, but I would say do you want to go in as a franchisee?”

But while the old number is slapped on Murray campaign signs across the city, Brazil, who spent a full shift nursing in a hospital emergency room on Thursday, still dreams about reopening the franchise and getting back the old phone number.

“My plan is to bring back Bones,” he said. “I have hopes of getting that phone number back. Maybe Murray would like to help me reopen the business? Maybe he’d like to be a minor partner?

“If Sam Katz can own a ballpark while he is mayor, maybe Glen Murray can also own part of Mr. Bones.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca