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P. R. Ritcey

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The T. L. Dodge, later P. R. Ritcey Store across the street from the Kentville Station, about 1905

P. R. Ritcey & Co. Limited was a long-established retail and wholesale business in Kentville located immediately across Aberdeen Street from the Kentville Station. It began in 1871 when Thomas Lewis Dodge started a hardware and furniture business, at first on Main Street but after a fire in 1876, he built a large three-storey store across from the station,[1] one of a wave of businesses that relocated near the station as Kentville's business district grew up around the railway following the completion of the Windsor & Annapolis in 1869. As his sons joined, the firm became the T. L. Dodge & Co. They served as agents for Massey Harris farm machinery and sold a wide array of hardware, paint, furniture and later groceries.[2] The store bought up warehouses along the track to the east and grew along grew Aberdeen street, providing rental space to several other retail businesses such as tailors and a series of small restaurants: Al's Lunch, Bill's Lunch, Moonlite Cafe, Mary's Coffee Shop, Larry's Fish & Chips, Kosy Korner and Shunamon's.[3] The firm was later known as the Supply Company and in the 20th century was bought by M. J. Ritcey who turned it into a grocery wholesaler which was taken over by his son P. R. Ritcey and became known as P. R. Ritcey & Co Limited.[4] After the collapse of the apple industry Ritcey bought the adjoining brick tile apple warehouse from Herbert Oyler[5]. The Ritcey firm remained active through the 1970s. The store and adjoining warehouses were demolished in 1975, except for the old Oyler warehouse. The property was purchased by Halifax Wholesalers in 1978[6] and in the 1980s it became a branch of the Cleve's sporting goods chain until 2013 when the store closed and the building was bought by the adjacent White's Funeral home. The Whites commissioned a large folk art style mural on the warehouse depicting locomotive 2551 pulling into the Kentville Station with a passenger train.

The store and warehouse were served by their own 457 foot long spur (reduced in the 1970s to 363 feet). It ran from an east-facing switch on the north side of the mainline at Mile 56.54 of the Halifax Subdivision and ended at a track bumper close to Aberdeen Street. Even after the growth of truck traffic Ritcey continued to receive rail deliveries, 5 to 10 cars a year in the late 1960s.[7] The business location immediately beside the station resulted in the store appearing in the background of many station photographs over the years, often with a box car parked for unloading.

Gallery

References and Footnotes

  1. ↑ Mable Nichols, The Devil's Half Acre (1967), p. 159
  2. ↑ Louis V. Comeau, Historic Kentville, Nimbus (2003), p. 4
  3. ↑ Louis Comeau, Facebook Post, November 5, 2020
  4. ↑ Louis Comeau, Facebook Post, November 5, 2020
  5. ↑ Herbert Oyler
  6. ↑ 1978 MT&T Directory, courtesy Louis Comeau
  7. ↑ 1969 Memorandum of General Information Corporate Info, page 8
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