Like the ‘Old Grey Mare’ in the long-ago song, downtown Elk Point “Ain’t what she used to be.” While discussing Small Business Week, Oct. 20 to 16 at the October chamber of commerce meeting, my thoughts wandered back to the downtown Elk Point we first saw in 1977, before we got to know the places and people that have made it our ‘right place to be’.
Railway Avenue had a railway then, on its south side, with Bochon’s Imperial Oil agency next to the towering lineup of grain elevators declaring the name of the community. Flanking the corner of Main Street and Railway Avenue were the Elk Point Hotel, owned and operated by Jim and Duane Young, and Mike Habiak’s Elk Point Sales and Service, with the Habiak family’s home next door, and a small building that had once been the post office between it and Imperial Lumber. Those buildings are now the Bethel Hotel, the Medavie Health Services ambulance station and RONA.
Across the street was the tall building, now painted red, then with a Laundromat on the north side and a barbershop on the south, divided by a stairway accessing the rooming house on the upper floors. North of that was a café that is now Taste Buds, then Kalynchuk’s Confectionery, now Golden Loaf Bakery. Two buildings north of there, one which had been Jean’s Café before being moved out of town, occupied the space where the Empress Restaurant opened in 1979 and expanded to its current size in 1985, owned and operated through the years by the Slywka family. Elk Point Insurance and Realty and the Toronto Dominion Bank completed the west side of the block. Dr. Stewart now has his chiropractic clinic in the former insurance office and Elk Point Insurance has moved to the newer version of the now-closed TD Bank. Businesses north of 49 Ave. included an earlier version of Capitol Drugs (now Pharmasave Drugs) and Gregg’s Family Shopping Centre, which was a Macleod’s dealer, and M & J Clothing, most recently Kelly’s Closet, and a small beauty salon, which is now an empty space.
Across main street from the TD Bank was Phil’s Allied Hardware, sadly destroyed by fire some years later, its replacement now the home of Guardian Drugs after first housing the hardware store’s replacement.
The Cornerstone Co-op on the north side of 49 Ave. is the latest in a long line of Co-op stores in Elk Point, starting out in the building just west of the Town of Elk Point office (that side of which was the library in 1977), moving to the large building on 49 St. and 50 Ave., which became PRAG Plumbing and Heating, and is again home to a plumbing and heating business after housing various businesses through the years. Co-op then moved west across Main Street to today’s Knotty Boyz location before the current store was built, with the former location of the much loved Arrow Theatre as part of its parking lot.
East of PRAG across from the United Church was a dental clinic, now an accounting business, and near Highway 41 was the Elk Point Medical Clinic staffed by Dr. K. C. Miller and Dr. E. D. Bauld, now a multi-office building currently housing St. Paul Regional FCSS and Elk Point Realty.
The Knotty Boyz location also had a number of other tenants over the years, having been a bank, a lumber dealer’s store with a travel agency and a lawyer’s office in the back, and with the Elk Point Sentinel, the Elk Point Review, realtor Shirley Harms (now across the street in the former post office), and currently a beauty salon in what had been Co-op’s meat department. Across the street to the north of Knotty Boyz were the Alberta Liquor Store, which became Simpsons Sears a few years later, and Wolanuk’s Fashions and Foods, most recently Granny Dawn’s. Across the street was Ballas Motors, part of which was later the first E-Can Oilfield location, another area housing a secondhand store, before it became a vacant lot with a skating rink for early Extravaganzas, and finally the location of Servus Credit Union.
Hope you enjoyed this walk through time… I surely did!
