Weekly flyers offer glimpse of past grocery stores
Against all odds, two pieces of fragile cheap paper, printed on one side, folded and stained … have survived eight decades. Today, Flash from the Past considers these exactly as it would contemplate snapshots from the same era.
Grocery store flyers, valid for one week, were meant to be distributed to homes, glued to hoardings or given out to current customers … and then tossed away. Obviously, neither of these two was discarded and each gives us a link to the 1930s.
The Hahn Superior Stores flyer was given to me several years ago. The McCarthy’s ad has a more detailed history. Flash reader Muriel Soehner has spent many years combing through boxes and closets full of things her late mother, Rose Nahrgang, had saved. Like many people growing up during the Depression, Rose (born in 1917) kept everything that came into her house at 68 Norman St. The original blank side is what saved this piece of advertising from the trash can. Paper printed on just one side was often set aside because “it might come in handy one day.” This one did: Rose filled it with acting notes for a church play she was in.
McCarthy’s Quality Meats and Groceries was actually McCarthy Brothers — and there was no shortage of brothers. Dennis McCarthy Sr. of Rochester, N.Y., had married Bertha Seiss of France in 1894 and they had two daughters before moving to Berlin, Ont., in 1900. Bertha lived up to her name and bore 11 more children before 1920. Of those, eight were boys. The McCarthy family home was on the north side of King West opposite Mount Hope Street.
In 1934, Dennis Jr. opened a meat store across King in the middle of the block between Mount Hope and Union. His father died within a year and shortly afterwards, Dennis Jr. and brother Louis opened a new store in a new building at 937 King St. W., right on the corner of Mount Hope. Although the advertisement doesn’t call it McCarthy Brothers, that name appears in directories of the time. Various other brothers had positions in the business.
In that corner building, the McCarthy Brothers store lasted only from 1935 until late 1938 but the firm carried on. They simply moved everything across King to a shop right beside the family home and continued selling groceries until the late 1940s. Louis McCarthy then went on to become a wellknown butcher at Philip Hoffmann’s Central Meat Market at 127 King W. After the McCarthys vacated 937 King in 1938, the legendary Gib Brohman began his grocery business there but Gib is a story for another time. This McCarthy advertisement must be from 1938 since that is the only year during their tenure that July 28 was a Thursday.
Dating the R.E. Hahn Superior Chain Stores flyer is a bit more difficult. Russell (usually known as Elmer) Hahn was born in 1906 and opened his grocery store in 1925, closing it two decades later to take a wartime job at Sunshine Waterloo. Elmer must have done fairly well in the grocery business; in 1938 he and wife Elvera moved into a new home at 197 Albert St. in Waterloo. For July 7 to be a Thursday there are three possible Hahn years: 1927, 1932 or 1938. I like to think both flyers are from the same year, 1938, but am willing to be proven wrong. Superior Chain Stores was one of many small franchise grocery chains that dotted Ontario before the supermarket era: remember Red & White Stores and IGA? There are still a few of those around but Superior, it seems, didn’t last.
Before becoming too excited at the prices (Carnation Condensed Milk, two large tins 19 cents! or Grape Nuts Flakes, 2 boxes for 21 cents!) keep in mind that a regular semiskilled labourer earned between 45 and 75 cents an hour in the late 1930s. Having noted that, I am still a big fan of Porterhouse steak at 32 cents a pound.