The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the closure of a Flin Flon landmark _ Freedman's Confectionery. It was back on Aug. 23, 2008 that the store's long and colourful history came to an end after nearly eight decades. Flin Flon still has the building _ it is now home to Flin Flon Flooring Centre _ but Freedman's is forever just a memory. On Aug. 22, 2008, The Reminder published the following article, written by Jonathon Naylor, to mark the closure of Freedman's. **** A long and colourful chapter in Flin Flon's history is coming to a quiet end. After nearly 80 years in business, Freedman's Confectionery will close its doors for the final time tomorrow. 'Lots of people are coming in and saying 'Oh, it's so sad' and 'What are we going to do without you?'' says manager Michelle Reid. 'We did have lots of faithful customers, and I feel bad for them, but there's just not much choice.' Reid says the iconic establishment, a Main Street fixture since the community's early days, has become unprofitable in the age of big-box stores. Such powerful competition wasn't a concern back in 1930 when a cigar-chomping Englishman named Jack Freedman pulled into the fledgling mining town. A bombastic who would grow into a legendary community figure, Freedman opened a confectionery, smoke shop and newspaper concession at 137 Main Street, where Subway now stands. The store came to be known as Freedman's Fall-In by virtue of the fact that patrons passing through the door were greeted by a staircase that took them down a sudden, three-foot drop-off. Built on muskeg, the once-even floor had gradually sunk into the ground. Freedman's quickly became more than just a provider of goods. Jack Freedman _ often viewed as more trustworthy, and certainly more convenient, than the banks _ would cash early miners' paycheques. 'The main artery back then wasn't Main Street, it was from HBMS to Freedman's to cash your cheque,' says Flin Flon historian Gerry Clark. Freedman's gave bored children a haven of comic books and candy bars. If a kid happened to be a penny or two short _ back when a penny was worth keeping _ Freedman would gladly eat the difference. In his fatherly voice, he called every little boy 'son.' As kind as he was to the often-curious youngsters, Freedman would never let them enter the long corridor stretching to the back of his store. Like something out of an old movie, it was there that he operated a smoke-filled pool hall. Men would sit around for hours playing cards and swapping stories. Many tried their luck on the immense pool table, kept level with shims to compensate for the Fall-In's heaved flooring. 'The pool room was always, always full,' says George Danko, who worked at Freedman's in the late 1950s. 'It was just impressive.' The pool hall's 'no kids' rule wasn't always obeyed. Jim Parres vividly recalls the time he snuck past everyone for a peek at what lay at the end of the forbidden tunnel. 'I was inundated with cigarette smoke, the clack of pool balls and the uproar of men playing cards at large tables,' recalls Parres in a recent article for Cottage North magazine. 'The scene was overwhelming and I retreated in horror. I was sure the men were gambling!' In a remote, isolated town with little to do, Freedman's Fall-In was the place to be. Much like Johnny's Confectionery years later, the Freedman's coffee bar, located at the front of the store, was a prime connection to the town grapevine. Even as new hangouts opened in ensuing years, the sizable coffee crowd from nearby HBMS stayed loyal to Freedman, and not just because they loved his morning brew. The generous entrepreneur had established an unbreakable rapport with many early miners who had arrived in Flin Flon penniless and in desperate need of work. See 'A' on pg. Continued from pg. 'Apparently all you had to do was go up to him and just ask and he'd give you a five-dollar bill out of his pocket, no questions asked,' says Clark. Anecdotes like that fed Jack Freedman's larger-than-life reputation. Born in London, England, on October 6, 1889, he was well known for a personality as colourful as his distinct wardrobe. One needn't know Freedman long to realize he was a man brimming with conviction. It couldn't have come as much surprise when he let his name stand for town council in Flin Flon's first municipal election in 1933. Freedman lost that year and again in 1934, when he was runner-up. He finally joined council in 1935 as an appointee following the surprise resignation of C.C. Sparling. But it would take years for Freedman's brand of politics to resonate. He was unsuccessful in a 1937 bid for re-election and lost again in 1938. He finally reclaimed his spot at the council table in 1939, holding it until 1944. One thing about Jack Freedman was that you always knew where he stood. Outside his confectionery he installed a blackboard on which he neatly wrote his often-controversial opinions on civic matters. The blackboard was the CNN of its day. Children and adults alike would pass by Freedman's for no other reason than to see what old Jack had to say. 'We kept up on everything (by reading the blackboard), either his opinions or things coming up _ anything of interest to him,' recalls longtime resident Jim Fell. 'He was quite a guy.' Of course not everyone agreed with Freedman's blunt commentaries, least of all City Hall, which was frequently peppered with his unflinchingly honest critiques. See 'Still' on pg. Continued from pg. It always seemed that Freedman had a better way to run municipal affairs. In 1952, he got his chance to put his ideas into practice when, after several tries, he was elected mayor after besting incumbent Cyril Steventon. Agree or disagree with his policies, Freedman's first tenure was certainly entertaining. Oldtimers still talk about the time he got into a heated shoving match with Councillor R.N. Frederickson during a special meeting of council. Freedman would enjoy two more mayoral stints over the next 18 years, all while he and his family maintained a business that by now was a firmly entrenched institution. 'Mr. Freedman's store was a landmark,' says Danko. 'A lot of people had respect for Mr. Freedman, plus they loved to shop there.' And they continued to shop there in droves when, in the late 1960s, Freedman transferred the store from its original location to 125 Main Street, the former home of Bell's Hardware, where it remains to this day. It was no longer a 'Fall-In,' but the key elements of Freedman's remained. The pool hall was moved into a dimly lit basement while the coffee bar occupied the back of the store, past the convenience items. After Freedman passed away, his son, Joe, continued to operate the store before eventually selling to the late Lloyd Young. Young wasn't about to tamper with success and happily kept the Freedman's name. By the time local businessman Rick Reid bought the business in 1989, it was clear the demands of the marketplace had changed and that Freedman's would also have to evolve. In time, the coffee bar was usurped by a wide selection of used books. When the appetite for video rentals skyrocketed, the paperbacks were replaced with VHS movies and video games. In the early 1990s, the pool hall, once a cornerstone of Freedman's, closed because the stairwell leading to the basement was no longer up to code. Boxed out of the video rental scene, the back half of the store became a Great Canadian Dollar Store outlet in 2001, offering a range of inexpensive housewares and knickknacks. Business was booming until, manager Michelle Reid says, the onslaught of the Flintoba Shopping Centre. Like Johnny's Confectionery, another landmark store that closed last year, Freedman's struggled in the new retail era. It's not clear what will become of the building after the doors close tomorrow. Reid says there has been interest from a couple of potential buyers and renters, but nothing is etched in stone. What is known is that Flin Flon is losing one of its last links to a bygone era when mud covered Main Street and a simple blackboard could be the focal point of attention. Things will never quite be the same again. 'Another piece of Flin Flon is going,' laments Fell.
