‘A pillar, AN anchor’
She touched the lives of many customers and even stood up to a would-be thief. Now, after 50 years at a Toronto pharmacy, Leona Purcell is saying goodbye
Leona Purcell has been a fixture in Toronto’s Upper Beach neighbourhood for half a century.
The 80-year-old, who retired this week from Lawlor Pharmacy, had a career that witnessed two relocations, multiple changes in ownership and generations of families served.
She worked through a global pandemic, pushed away forged prescriptions and even testified in court about a robbery that occurred during her shift.
“She’s been that fixture that has always been in the community and in the shop,” said Paulette Altilia, 67, who has known Purcell since she started working there around 1974.
During the pandemic, Purcell refused to take days off. She’d tell her employer, pharmacist Kyro Maseh, “I need to come into work. This is what I do,” he recalled. “These are the people I serve.”
It was the same when her son died last May. Maseh offered her time off, but she insisted on working — she loved her job. “It was her way of gaining a sense of normality,” he said.
Last Tuesday, Purcell hung up her uniform vest for good, ending a five-decade career that earned her a reputation as not just a beloved pharmacy assistant, but also a friendly face in the east end community.
As she wrapped up her final shift, Purcell hugged her colleagues, grabbed her bags and walked toward the exit, pausing in the door frame to wave one last goodbye to the place that became her second home.
“I’m going to miss it,” she said in an interview a few days later. “The people, the customers and the staff. I got to know some of the customers so well. To see them come in and get their medication, take it home and come back in a week feeling all better and happy, it’s satisfying.”
Born in Toronto, Purcell was a kid when she and her family moved to a farm a few hours north in Port Sydney.
Years later, they moved back to the Milliken neighbourhood — or Milliken Corners, as Purcell remembers it — and she attended high school in nearby Markham.
Purcell worked an office job at the telecommunications company Motorola until she and her husband had their son in 1964. When he was about 10, Purcell was ready to work again, albeit not in another office job.
Her sisters who worked at the pharmacy, then called Safeway, told her the shop could use extra hands. Before she knew it, she was a parttime assistant.
Working her way to a full-time role, Purcell fast became the go-to person around the store, filling prescriptions, receiving the morning order and counting the till. When she started, everything was done on paper.
“Before, we would use a typewriter to type out the labels,” Purcell recalled. “All their medications, everything was on cards and in files. It was a lot of paperwork.”
Over the years, Purcell developed relationships with all kinds of customers. Some moved away, others died. And new ones were always walking through the door.
The role did come with its challenges, such as the time a thief stormed into the store and stole medication — an ordeal that resulted in Purcell having to testify in court as a witness — and when people showed up with forged prescriptions.
Purcell recalled one incident in which a young man demanding over-the-counter drugs said he had a gun. She immediately called his bluff. “I said to him, ‘Well, why don’t you show me your gun?’ ”
He gave her a strange look and replied, “You want to see my gun?”
Purcell told the man cameras were everywhere. “You better go,” she remembers saying. He went.
“It’s funny now,” Purcell laughed. “But at the time I was stupid.”
Marie Middleton, 93, remembers meeting Purcell when she was working at the pharmacy’s first location in a plaza near Victoria Park Avenue and Kingston Road. The original owner ran the shop there until 1987.
“She has always been so nice,” Middleton said. “If she didn’t have what you wanted, she’d get it for you. You would never have to go to another store.”
Purcell often asked her customers about their lives and families. “She was interested in you as a friend as well as a customer,” Middleton said.
Middleton’s daughter, Patti, started going to the pharmacy after it moved down the street to Kingston and Bingham Avenue, the second of three locations.
After learning of her retirement, she had some parting thoughts for Purcell: “Have fun, you earned it. And rest!”
Maseh threw Purcell a party last week to celebrate the milestone, surprising her by inviting some former colleagues she hadn’t seen in a while. “She was in absolute shock when she saw them,” he said. “It was a sight to see.”
To Maseh, Purcell was more than an employee. As he wrote in a recent Facebook post, she was “a pillar, an anchor” and “a matriarch.”
“She’s our blessing,” he said, noting she taught generations of people, including students and other pharmacists.
Purcell plans to spend more time gardening and with family, including her grandson.
Asked if Purcell’s husband, Patrick, wanted to comment for this story, the Star heard him over the phone in the background. “No,” he told his wife.
“It’s just nice to have you home.”