By Grace Meger in 2014
Main street, I suppose that phrase means very little to most kids today, but to the Heinsburg people, who can remember what it meant to them, may have many stories... besides the stores, there was sled races and car runaway’s, maybe the odd horse stories...Winter streets are bad enough, in 2000’s but what was it like when there were no snow plows??? ...There must be many stories over the years...
I arrived on the main street of Heinsburg, when the town was 14 or 15 years old and I was about 6yrs old, in town with my mom and dad... We had aunts and uncles in town, but that is the earliest that my memory comes into this story...First of all I thought the lights coming from the stores were amazing, and the sidewalks, that took one down the street that was on that eternal slope, down, down, down, right to the end and if you didn’t stop there was another level just like you see now... over the bank ... on that level were a lot of hitching posts for the many teams that brought all the shoppers... these sidewalks, that were made of boards levelled off, in front of every store and then you had steps and more slopes, but they had quite a ring to them when your feet slammed down, bang, bang, bang, all the way down. I wish, I remembered, all the kids who were there running with me...
At the very top of the street, if you stood, looking down, was Kapjack’s, to your right and a little white building, that once was a drug store, on, your left at the opposite side... This building, at one time, was ran by the Legendary William Cameron, who’s story you can read in “A LIFE OF WRITING AND ADVENTURE” by Robert W. Hendriks that he recounted in 2008. it is also on the web. plus on page 398 of “THE LAND OF THE RED AND WHITE” is a story that was taken from a farm and ranch mag. written in 1961...Over the years this little building was used for many things but my grandmother Ida Botting, lived in it last, and my dad tore it down and brought all the material out to the farm... One door down was a little log house with a well and water pump in front... Lawerence and Olga Sharkey lived in it at one time, then the last to live in there was, Gabriel Lagimodiere, (Nolan), it’s gone now, but while Gabe lived there, his granddaughter spent a lot of time with him and I talked with Ginny a bit today and she tells me, she has good memories of living there in Heinsburg, and I remember the seniors, really liked and enjoyed that little girl who was so nice and good to her grandfather...
Something else stood between, this little house, and the meat market/telephone exchange, ran by John Maksymuik...and then you had Gregor’s store...
Back, to the right side, kapjack’s had a wearhouse and an oil/ gas station.
The pool hall that was next, provided relaxation and a barber shop, where Babe Sharkey was one of the many barbers who cut hair. He has the barber chair, being the last barber to own it and it is being handed down through the family...
The building is in a sorry state now, but Henry Botting did buy it and also, the house on the back of the lot that Thelma and Exile Sharkey called home for a long time...Alvin and I even rented that house for a few months in 1968 while our house was being built out here at the farm... these, and lot have now been resold and is deteriating rapidly...
THE, “Kates mercantile” store was exactly opposite to the Gregor “Red and White”
and they were gentle rival’s for a long time. This, brings to mind a story, that I don’t know for sure if it was true or not, goes like this;
one morning a sign went up on the “Red and White” window, “we have Robin Hood by the bag, while in the window of the “Mercantile” that claimed, they had Aunt Jemima,, by the box”...
A restaurant was across the alley from Katz’s where the post office now stands... I think it was a Chinese family who ran it first....In later 1940’s Trig and Wilma Kjenner took over the restaurant, doing a good job for the town.
My Mom and Dad, often played cards with them and my memory can take me to the living quarters that were upstairs in the building... Also the stairway that led to them...(this picture shows Joyce Castle, looking out the door of the restaurant) This was one of many building’s that burned in town...
In the time that I remember, there were buildings, right on the corners of both sides, at the end of the main street. This intersected, what would be called an avenue in towns today...
The one on the right, (remember your looking down main street) served many venues from co-op, to lumber and in later years I knew a girl by the name of Sylvia Babuik lived upstairs there. I think it was a food store then and they had a neat ramp from the back, upstairs door, to the bank toward the restaurant...There was also a ramp like this, out from the 2nd storie of the hotel at the west end of the avenue...(a ghostly view of MAIN STREET)
Right now I cannot get a picture in my mind what was on the left side of the street that far down...but a picture on pg. 294 in the “land of the red and white shows a garage owned by Matheson’s... plus the store that Mike and Joyce Nychyporuk set up with clothing and some groceries, many years later...Joyce had good taste in clothes...
Around the corner to the right you would find a car garage, ran by Mykytiw’s, Walter... Somewhere tucked between that and the hotel, was a little house the turned out to be an electrical shop later on... Mike Buck was handy with that kind of thing at one time...
