Employment and Business
The Jewish-owned shops in North Bay were all very close together on Main Street as well as Oak Street. Sol Waiser arrived in 1912 and established his men’s wear store at 133 Main Street West. He expanded into the wholesale business with sons Arthur and William and daughter Zelda in 1924. In the 1920s, the Schacter family started Grand Union, a grocery store on Klock Avenue, which later became Algonquin Street. Most of the Jewish business owners ran small general stores, clothing shops or home furnishing stores. Families eked out a living, sometimes working various lines of trade at the same time. Allen Rosenberg recalled that his father made extra income by bidding on raw furs and cleaning and stretching them in the basement of the Main Street clothing store before reselling them. Brown’s Furs Ltd., operated by brothers Abe and Morris Brown, operated a retail fur store and also did repairs and offered storage. Jack Adams ran Adams’ Men’s Wear, which had been started by his father Philip. Other stores that opened before the Second World War included Sam and Eleanor Herman’s business Home Furnishing Co., Lefcoes Ladies’ Wear, Silverstein’s, Hoffman’s Ladies' Wear, and Bob Kizell Men’s Wear.
In its heyday, Joe Rosenberg’s Men’s and Boy’s Wear was known as the outfitter’s store of choice for the region’s hard-labouring men, who supplied themselves in North Bay before heading out to work in the lumber and mining camps. Joe would set aside next season’s clothes and a portion of their savings for men returning to the camps. It was recalled that sometimes these savings were all that was left once the rough and tumble labourers had spent the off-season in and out of bars, or sometimes prison, before returning to the physically demanding labour in the camps.
Other stores focussed on a more upscale market. Typically, such retailers would travel to Toronto to purchase the latest fashions or arrange custom work with the large wholesale clothing trade in the city. Nate Rivelis operated a ladies’ and children’s wear store called Nate Rivelis Ltd. Ladies’ Wear, which started as a small family-run business in 1926 and grew into a department store, employing between 25 to 30 people. Harry and Rose Himmel (née Atkins) moved to North Bay from Toronto in 1931 and opened Himmel’s Ladies’ Wear store on 147 Main Street West. Already by the late 1930s, it was the Jewish businesses that constituted the major shopping and clothing district in North Bay.
