Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada The "Good Old Days"

The "Good Old Days"

They were and they weren't. Humans tend to remember what they found pleasant and forget the not so good stuff. Here's a pleasant memory of the good old days.

One of the first gun shops I visited was Epps Sporting Goods just north of Orillia, Ontario, sometime in the 1960s. Dad stopped in for fishing stuff, and I wandered around looking at whatever was there.

It's difficult for some people to understand, but it was before big box stores like Cabelas and Bass Pro appeared. There was no glitz. No Black Friday sales that now last a weekend, a week or a month. With a few exceptions, if you wanted hunting or fishing supplies, you went to a mom and pop store and spent your money there. The "bling" at Epps Sporting Goods was stuffed game heads and signs hanging from the ceiling and the walls.

There was lots to keep customers occupied, in addition to what was for sale. And I'll never forget the wooden floor! It creaked wherever you walked.



Back then, purchases were paid for with cash. Paper money. These were pieces of paper the federal government produced that were used to buy virtually everything - like groceries, gas, restaurant food and corner store goodies. Not many stores took charge cards. In fact, except for big city gas stations, no places I remember accepted charge cards. Mind you, I was just a kid.

And of course, there were no bank machines or online stores. I remember when my dad got his Chargex card (that was what VISA cards were called a long time ago). He felt he had arrived. The bank trusted him to buy on credit!

Older folks often complain about computers, online shopping and Internet banking. For me, they were the greatest advancements the world could have asked for. We saw it coming watching television shows like Star Trek. The Internet sure has made things easier. Having dozens (hundreds?) of online catalogs makes it easier to find things and determine fair prices.

No more waiting for the postman to deliver a paper catalog...and the weeks or months of waiting for an order to arrive in the mail. The mail seemed to move more slowly then. And even with Saturday delivery, it always took forever.

For mail order sales, paying by cheque or money order was the norm. Looking back though, it wasn't so great. If you paid by cheque, it had to clear before the store would ship the goods. That added to the time it took to get your stuff.

The convenience of googling what you need, paying for it by Interac or with a credit card online is a wonderful improvement.



Paper catalogs are great, but so is my tablet. I can explore what a store has to offer by reading through their pages, or use the quick search for a specific item.

Progress is just fine, but some of what people miss about the "good old days" is justified.

Chatting with the gun shop staff and patrons was great. Back before the politically correct days of "No Smoking" in the store or having rifles locked up behind the counter, a trip to the gun shop was a social experience. You would meet and talk about the events of the day, swap lies about which rifle cartridge was the best, or complain about the government. At Epps, there was a wood stove - complete with ash trays and a couple of chairs - that served as a meeting place. It was where Ellwood and the locals gathered to shoot the breeze.

While computers make finding and paying for things easier and faster, the social interaction is missing. There is no human element. There are no voices. You cannot see the smiles or hear the anger in anyone. You do not feel the joy of chatting with someone who you haven't seen for a while. And while you can post pictures on the Internet of your last hunt, it pales in comparison to telling the story of what happened in person. You have to see their faces.

If you still frequent a shop with that old fashioned feel, good for you. Those places are almost gone. I guess we cannot have our cake and eat it too.

So no input on Turdoes latest attempt to ban firearms in Canada?

I still frequent a shop just like that.

I try to buy all my gun related stuff there and I don't care if the price is a little higher. Folks there are friendly, knowledgeable and don't care if you've just stopped in to chat and not buy anything, although I usually do buy something even if it's only a box of some 22 ammo match flavor just to try out.

I feel like it's kind of a social gathering of gun people.

^^^This^^^

Yep. We still have one Gun Store like that left in my old home town. Stop in there nearly every time I’m in town.
Started buying guns there when I was 13. I’m still shopping there 49 years later.

It's always nice to get together with likeminded people. These days, we do this at a couple of gun clubs. As far as buying stuff is concerned, I have a couple of stores that I check in with first. I rarely go to a chain store unless they have a screaming deal.

Cabelas in Barrie, ON, for example, is overpriced, but they have a large sales area and are in a city. I expect that they are paying through the nose to lease the space.

Epps has changed, but that's the downside to progress. Some of it was government regulation.

When I was a kid, I went into every sporting goods shop I saw, and a lot of them were just like Epps' store. Of course, when I was a kid, most hunting and fishing stores also doubled as hardware, furniture, or even grocery stores but there were some dedicated sporting goods stores which were special. In Lewiston, Idaho there was Lolo Sporting Goods and there was Fred Warren's. In Calgary, Alberta, there were Barrottos (When Barry and Otto first opened it) and Frenchy's (when Frenchy was still running it). In addition, Hudson Bay had a great gun section.
Years later, I gunsmithed for stores which always had a pot of coffee brewing for customers and staff and where the regulars were always welcome. There were always a few guys who just liked to hang around the shop and watch me work. I maintained a junk box, full of old scope mounts, sights, and miscellaneous gun parts, for some of the guys to sort through when they came in. I would salt it with the occasional good piece so there was always a chance they could find a treasure. Most of those guys are gone now and I miss them a lot. During most hunting seasons (while I was in Calgary) I was too busy to get out and hunt much so I hunted vicariously through those customers who would come in and recount their adventures.
I visited the Elwood Epps store, and bought a rifle, about twenty years ago and I felt like the ambience was a bit ghostly rather than of the here and now. GD

In 1972 at the Eaton’s store in Downtown Port Arthur they had a cardboard barrel filled with British SMLE’s .303–full wood stock and some with bayonets—$13.95.

That was toward the end of good times before FACs and other legislation was brought in. . In 1979, I was posted to Europe when the craziness started.


Yes, that was an unusual time. Ellwood had two daughters who predeceased him. When his second daughter died, he started running the store again. His son in law had no interest in continuing after his wife died.

Ellwood put the store up for sale in the mid 90s and a fellow from southern Ontario, George Winkel, bought the place. Around that time, the store was getting run down. It was overdue for cleaning and a clearance sale to sell off old stock. I’ll post some pictures later. I am off to the range and will be near the store.

George sold the store to his son Wes. I don't know if George and Winnie are still living in the house attached to the store. The house is built on the left side of it, where the Primo sign is. There is an entrance to the shop from the house. After Ellwood sold the place to George, he and Isabelle stayed in the house for a couple of years. Ellwood had a habit of wandering in and grabbing things he needed.

Ellwood died in 2002 and had been living in a single level cottage because his doctor told him the stairs at the house were too much for him. By that time, he was in his late 80s.


The place is closed Mondays.



The range was empty today because of the cool temperatures. It was -1 with wind gusts. I didn't stick around too long. As you can see, there was no one in the parking lot.

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You can see the effects of the wind on one group. I suspect both could have been tighter, but both were close enough. These are 6mm 85 gr. Speer BTSPs. The 0,800-inch group was shot with AA2230. The 0.875-inch group with N530

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