We moved to Timmins in the summer of 1970, just after I had completed kindergarten. My father actually preceded us by a year, beginning work there in 1969 and commuting. I suspect we waited a year so that my sister and I could finish our school year.
Timmins was huge by my reckoning, boasting about 26,000 residents (about 40,000 after amalgamation), compared with Cochrane’s 5,000. Most of it had been built in the ‘20s and ‘30s, the newest bits in the ‘50s. And it towered above Cochrane, its downtown core reaching up three stories. (I always referred to the downtown core as uptown, as we had to travel uphill to get there.)
I found the core to be a riot of activity whenever my mother brought me there. There were streetlights, traffic was dense and continuous. People bustled here and there, the sidewalks thick with them. Buildings crowded one another, with barely a hand span between them, unlike in Cochrane where you could usually drive a truck between them. It was all spectacular to me, but the most spectacular place downtown was Bucovetsky’s. It was the only building in town with an elevator. Enormous by even today’s reckoning, it was most definitely a service elevator fitted for public use, its walls draped with canvas. I would insist we use it whenever we went there. Although the stairwell was fascinating, too. There were photographs lining the walls, most black and white (most photographs were black and white, then), all chronicling the history of the store: there were pictures of car give-a-ways, fur coats, bridal dresses, pictures of Christmas displays, Christmas windows, Christmas floats, ribbon cuttings. There were newspaper clippings, and a few sales advertisements thrown in for good measure. But what always caught the eye in the stairwell was the huge painting of 3rd Ave between the 1st and 2nd floor, painted when Timmins was still just a bush camp mining town, its few permanent buildings just log cabins.
The 101 Mall was still to come, with its elevator and its central gallery, its artificial Christmas tree hung from the ceiling and spanning three stories.
Woolworths’ hadn’t opened yet, either, but when it did, it had an escalator. That revolving staircase frightened me when I first saw it. I was terrified that my foot or my clothing would be caught in its teeth whenever I stepped on or off of it.
Like I said, I was quite young when we first came to Timmins.
