“They did all kinds of novelty hats: cowboy hats and fezzes for the Shriners, and they imported toques; so we used to go in and try on the hats and play with the felts.”
Interview with Barb Love
November 30, 2012
Barb Love shows Marilyn Ottenhof a photo of her father in his baby carriage with his parents (and an unidentified man on the far right) outside their Montreal dry goods store in 1924.
Barb Love shows a photo of her father in his baby carriage with his parents (and an unidentified man on the far right) outside their dry goods store in Montreal in 1924.
Her father's parents came from eastern Europe at the turn of the last century, his father from Lithuania and his mother from Russia. She tells how her grandfather lost the business in the 1929 Crash and how things changed for the family.
Her father went into his father-in-law's hat business when he married, and Barb remembers playing as a child in her parents' hat store; the business still exists as Magill Hat.
Her grandparents' dry goods store is now a pawn shop, which she visited with her father a year or so before he died.