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Erindale General Store |
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John Moras Barker owned and operated the Erindale General Store and stable livery. He became a local postmaster and justice-of-the-peace. Catherine and John M. Barker’s family home and general store burned in 1919. John and Catherine moved into a new house on Mindemoya Road, which they were in the process of building at the time of the fire. Thankfully, John was able to borrow money to rebuild the store in 1921-2. After his death in 1928, his son Delmar Barker took over the store. It served, originally, as both the family home of Marjorie and Delmar Barker, and the Barker General Store. The building we see today once stood in what is now the middle of the westbound lanes on Dundas Street, as Dundas Street through Erindale was once narrower. The building was moved back from Dundas Street when the road was widened in the 1950s. The square "tower" portion was added in 1938 for expanded living space. To the rear of the building, before the relocation, was the Erindale Motors garage. Following Delmar Barker’s death in 1944, the general store was operated by his widow, Marjorie (nee Adamson) Barker into the 1960s. Their daughter recalled, as a child, that there was a pot-belly stove, a checkers board, and ice cream being sold in the store. One of the Barker daughters, Ruth, ran a real estate office out of the building in the late 1960s, and another daughter, Grace, then ran an antique store called "Missinike Supposium" out of the building until 1982. The Missinike Supposium was well known for its eclectic merchandise and for its motto: "Where everything is what you suppose it to be." The building sat derelict and vandalized until it was acquired by the O’Neill family and opened as a vacuum store – a role it continues today, albeit under different ownership. It is one of three former general stores in Erindale Village that survive today. |
