A significant trend in the second half of the 20th century was the decline of the downtown retail sectors of towns and villages of Wellington County.
After two decades of stagnating business, merchants in the years immediately after World War II displayed a great deal of optimism, based on rising incomes in the farm sector and faith in the future of their towns.
Though automobile ownership had become widespread by the late 1940s, few people ventured out of town to do their shopping. Most small towns offered a full range of services and products. The concepts of malls and big stores on the edge of town were foreign to most people.
Nowhere was the sense of optimism in the 1950 era greater than in Clifford. With a population of some 500 or 600, the village was the smallest incorporated municipality in Wellington County, but it had a strong and diverse retail sector.
The reeve of Clifford in the second half of the 1940s was C.H. Bieman, co-owner of one of the village’s major businesses, Bieman Brothers Creamery, which also operated an egg grading station. He pushed for civic improvements, and championed the building of a water system, in the belief that Clifford could not compete for new industries without one. The cost, some $60,000, seems almost trivial compared to today’s infrastructure projects, but it was a huge expenditure for a small village like Clifford six decades ago. Council let the contract for the work to Scott Construction in the spring of 1949.
The contract for the well originally went to local well driller Edwin Keeso, but in May 1949 council withdrew the contract and awarded the work to F. Davidson and Company.
While Scott’s crew was busy digging up the streets, another project got under way: an arena.
That project was paid for almost entirely by donations and fundraising events. Members of the Rotary Club, led by Allister Kruspe, dominated the committee that guided the project.
Work on the arena began in May 1949, with grading of the site and the demolition of an old building that had been used by the fall fair. It had originally been a school. Mindful of keeping costs as low as possible, the committee used some of the wood to build bleachers for a new baseball diamond.
The contract for the arena went to G.H. Magwood, of Markham. In style, it was a conventional arena building of that era, with wood girders and sheathed in galvanized steel. The ice surface, at 172 feet by 72 feet, was slightly under regulation size of 200 by 85 feet. Seating surrounded the ice, and dressing rooms were at the front of the building. Due to the cost, there was no thought of installing artificial ice in 1949.
While Magwood and his men laboured at the building, the ball diamond was graded and lighting installed. Clifford’s famous girl’s team, the Swing Skirts, opened the diamond with a game on July 1, played in front of a crowd of 1,200. Girl’s baseball was still in its heyday in north Wellington and adjoining areas, routinely drawing huge crowds. The game was a fundraising event for the arena. The optimistic people on the committee had let the contract before all the money had been raised, convinced that there would be no difficulty in reaching their objective. The project would cost slightly over $30,000.
The big projects, though expensive, seemed to have been widely supported in Clifford. A large crowd turned out for the nomination meeting for the 1950 council. Nominations came forward for three men for reeve and seven for the four seats on council.
All the candidates spoke briefly. Reeve Bieman, pleased to have set several projects in motion, decided to retire after five years at the head of council and take a less onerous seat as a councillor.
In addition to the waterworks and the arena, Bieman was responsible for re-establishing a fire brigade in Clifford, following a disastrous main street blaze that had to be fought by out-of-town forces.
William Penman, a cattle drover with 15 years of experience on council, moved to the head of the table. In the end, only Penman stood for the reeve’s position, and the four council seats were filled by acclamation as well. Interestingly, merchants and businessmen were in control. In addition to Bieman, council included shoe merchant Len Hefke and storekeeper C.V. Koehler.
There were roughly 45 businesses in Clifford in 1950, more than twice as many as there are today.
With an ample supply of water from the 282-foot deep well, and its impressive recreational facilities, Clifford merchants and residents believed the future was a bright one. They looked forward to attracting more businesses and industries and to a growing population.
For a town its size, the main street retail strip was an impressive one in 1950. There were two hardware stores, Kropp’s Co-operative and Eugene Lantz. Grocers and variety stores owners included Len Schmidt, Roy Bonham, Conrad Koehler, Allan Robb, and Sydney Smith. The latter was a multi-generation business, begun in 1857, and remains active today as a wholesale distributor.
Other businesses included R.B. Wightman’s bakery, Elsie Runge’s furniture store, Len Hefke’s shoe store, Lantz Bros butcher shop, and Edgar Eckenswiller’s gift and novelty store.
The latter was a sideline: Eckenswiller was Clifford’s long-serving clerk-treasurer, serving the village from 1920 until 1970.
Clifford boasted five full-service garages in 1950: Arnold Gadke, Smith & Cassidy, C.G. McPhail, Murray Snider, and Eldon Demerling. The latter was the senior firm, dating to the mid 1920s, and it remains in service today. In 1950, the Demerling garage had a dealership for Mercury and Meteor cars, and McPhail sold Plymouth and Chrysler products, as well as Allis-Chalmers farm machinery.
Several of those businesses expanded or renovated their stores in the postwar years. There were also some new businesses, among them the Four Aces Grill, operated by George Hohnstein, who had honed his culinary skills as a cook with the Canadian Air Force.
The only thing missing from Clifford’s main street was a drug store, and that need was partially filled by Dr. A.J. Butler, who dispensed some of the medicines needed by his patients.
Bieman Brothers were among those expanding their operations. To their original creamery established in 1922 the firm had added freezer locker rentals in 1936, egg grading in 1937, and a poultry division in 1945. With two cattle drovers and a feed mill in town, farmers had local buyers for virtually all their produce and livestock.
Anchor of the downtown, visually if not in business volume, was the Mansion Inn. The hotel dated back to the mid 1860s. Cliff Speer, who took over the business in 1948, undertook a number of improvements, including a steam heating system, and running water in all rooms.
Downtown Clifford suffered several major fires over the decades, but none was devastating as the blaze that claimed the Mansion House in 1993. That fire left a major hole in the downtown streetscape that only aggravated a feeling of decline, a result of local customers deserting their own retailers in favour of those elsewhere.
Still, Clifford has suffered the changing shopping habits of the public better than some other centres. It still boasts a grocery store and a hardware, keys to attracting a regular stream of customers and helping to support other businesses.
Who in Fergus in 1950, would have imagined St. Andrew Street without a grocery store or a hardware store? But that is the situation there in 2010.