More Simpson Street Commercial Property from way back when....

I am very lucky to have the Wally Young and Scalzo collection of brill bus photos to help date many of the businesses around the Lakehead cities of Fort William and Port Arthur. This post is divided into 3 parts, the first one dedicated to the East End Service Station which is actually still at the same intersection at Simpson St. and Pacific Ave. at the base of the East End overpass which spans all the railroad tracks east of Simpson street.

The red arrow here shows East End Service as an Esso station in 1969 and the very unique blotter at the right(you remember blotters?...that's what you used to blot up the wet ink from using actual pen and ink...before ball point pens.) The blotter is from 1949 and shows quite a bit of information throughout the US and Canada regarding people population, automobile population, # of commercial vehicles etc etc. A very interesting read.

This next photo shows Simpson Street in about the same place as the Brill Bus photo above, the arrow pointing to where East End Service is today...just behind the clump of trees. The last photo here is of East End Service showing the East End overpass. Note that there are no gas pumps here now. The last photo below shows where it is on a map of the Simpson Pacific Ave area.

The second part to this post shows the corner Simpson and Bethune Streets.

Simpson and Bethune St. was a very busy place in 1913. Here is L. W. Goodall's Bakery "pastry specialties". An unusual combination being a bakery and a billiard hall...but here it is. The next(coloured) photo is how the building looked on the north side in 1970 with a very vivid Coca Cola sign and Mario's Custom Tailors next door.

This is how the building looks today only being used as an apartment block. The first picture shows the same angle as the Coca Cola photo above and also shows where Mario's Tailors was. The second photo shows the full corner of Simpson and Bethune.

Finally, thanks to the Scalzo collection is another Brill bus just north of the Simpson and Victoria Ave intersection. The first 1969 photo shows how much more vivid the James Murphy Coal company sign was then compared to now. Further down the street you can see how one would be forced down Victoria ave as Simson curves to the right. Today this street cuts right through the buildings at the end. The last photo taken just recently shows the faded James Murphy Coal Co sign of the past. Our city shows many signs like this of times past.
Click on photos to enlarge!

Another Then and Now from Fort William, now Thunder Bay, Ontario

Here is a wonderful group of photos looking north down Simpson Street from Victoria Ave. The before ones taken in about 1920 showing how bustling Simpson Street was. The blow-up photos below detail things a little better. Looking futher down Simpson Street was the Rex Theatre, shown here in B&W. It was situated right next to the West Hotel. In the blow-up on the right you can see Gerry`s Hardware, the International Employment agency, and Perrin`s Biscuits and Confection. On the left of the old photo above is a row of buildings between Victoria and Miles street and in today`s photo, there are no buildings at all there now, due to a couple of fires through the years.

Our now photos look pretty barren!

Please click on the photos to enlarge them!

It`s incredible to see how our fair city has changed through the years...sometimes for the good and sometimes not!