57

The Growth of Perkus Ltd.
1 July 2003

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Mr. Breland and Mr. Kussner decided to open a store in Cochrane, which they called Perkus Limited. They got off the railway, working for the railway, and they opened their first store in Cochrane. And then when the gold strike came in Kirkland Lake they decided to open a store in Kirkland Lake. The Kirkland Lake store was called Perkus Limited. Also, Morris Breland's store was located there for quite a while. But the building was divided into two parts, half of which Morris Breland shared, and the other half originally when the building was built, became the home of the Woolworth's Store in Kirkland Lake. That business existed for quite a while.

Jacob Kussner had a sister Sonia and he brought Sonia to Kirkland Lake and she later married a man by the name of Rosenberg. She was the manager of the ladies' wear section of Perkus Limited as it existed in Kirkland Lake, I would say until about, if I remember correctly until about 1935, late thirties, when they then rented the old, made a deal to rent the building to Woolworth's Limited.

Jacob Kussner had a sister Sonia and he brought Sonia to Kirkland Lake and she later married a man by the name of Rosenberg. She was the manager of the ladies' wear section of Perkus Limited as it existed in Kirkland Lake, I would say until about, if I remember correctly until about 1935, late thirties, when they then rented the old, made a deal to rent the building to Woolworth's Limited.

By this time they had already established a branch of Perkus Limited in Kapuskasing. Another branch was established in Iroquois Falls. Different members of the family operated these businesses. They were quite successful businesses.

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Breland in business in Kirkland Lake
1 July 2003

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However, Breland continued the business in Kirkland Lake and employed several of his relatives who came and worked there in the early days. Joe Dash came from Montreal. He was a nephew of Mrs. Rosenberg's, who was running Perkus Limited at the time and things, with height of, the depression was on in Montreal and Joe was, the family was having a fairly hard time. He came to Kirkland Lake and went to work for his uncle who ran a clothing business which he did very well at. Eventually, he went off on his own but he learned everything he knew about clothing working for Morris Breland and working with Bernie Breland.

Bernie came home from the university. He was a university boy at one stage. He went to university in Toronto and came back to Kirkland Lake to work for his dad. Things got very difficult. They had a family home, Breland established a family home in Toronto because there were three daughters in the family and they were hoping to find suitable matches and that was impossible in Kirkland Lake in those days. You know, they were looking for Jewish boys and there weren't too many.

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Joe Dash and his son celebrating his Bar Mitzvah
1950
Adath Israel Synagogue, Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada

Credits:
Photograph courtesy of Eddie Duke

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This is a photograph of, of uh, Joe Dash and his son celebrating his Bar Mitzvah. His son in this photograph is thirteen years old. Uh, Joe Dash by this time had been in Kirkland Lake about twenty years. Joe Dash came to Kirkland Lake from Montreal in the early thirties. Uh, his family was, it was depression time in Montreal, his family was having a very difficult time, and Mr. Dash had uh, several children, I don't remember how many, but as I understand it they were having a hard time feeding all the children at that particular time. And Mr. Dasheffski was related to Mrs. Rosenberg and he wrote to her and asked, you know, asked if they had a place in the store, probably, for their son Joe. And Joe came to Kirkland Lake. He was probably about fourteen or fifteen years old and he went to work in the store and worked for Mr. Breland, which was then, it was still a partnership, it was still Perkus Limited, so he worked in the men's side of the business, you know, and he was, he was very well liked. He was a very likable young boy and I think his wife's family, when he finally married, persuaded him to go into business for himself. Several of the Levine's, Sofie, Sofie Levine . . . several of, two of Sofie's brothers were in the clothing business and anyway they persuaded Joe that it was time to go into business for himself. They opened a small shop actually on Government Road next door to my brother's studio and I, I would imagine this would be in the late thirties. And he did well. He did quite well. And he learned, he had learned to measure people properly.

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Albert Kokotow in business
1 July 2003

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Albert Kokotow and his brother, his younger brother Irving or "Issie" as some people called him, came to Kirkland Lake, I think mostly from, they had been in Timmins earlier. They had an uncle in Timmins and they came into Kirkland Lake in the early thirties looking for an opportunity actually, and I think Albert first started selling wood. He was selling cordwood, delivering it, and he also was selling flour and delivering it, and he was trying to, he was wholesaling hay and oats, and from the hay and oats he got into flour, and then eventually he started bottling soft drinks.

The early bottling plant was very rudimentary. I remember Albert telling me about it. How he had to work with both hands and one foot and begin to tramp on something to put the caps on and had to use both hands to move the bottles along and get them into the right place. But he described this. And eventually it became quite a modern bottling plant. I remember when they got their bottle washing machines. They would show me through the place very proudly, even though I was just a kid at the time.

And his business grew and eventually he got into the lumber business and at first he was just selling large logs of lumber as firewood. I remember we used to buy lumber in loads of lumber, which came up by train, and we would burn them in our furnace on top of the, at first put in a load of coal, and we'd throw in a few of these logs on top of the coal, and they would last all night, you know, until eventually we did get a stoker.

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Irving Kokotow
1950

Credits:
Photograph courtesy of Eddie Duke

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This is Mr. Irving Kokotow. He was the brother of Albert Kokotow. There were two brothers Albert and Irving. Irving was quite a lot younger than Albert and worked very hard in the bottling business actually. For a long time he more or less delivered pop, but eventually he settled down and he married Ben Atkins' daughter actually...

He was quite effective when the Atkins' brothers took over the sawmill at Kenogami and went into the lumber business. They had been in the lumber business in sort of an odd way. They would buy firewood and sell it and they would haul logs and sell them to other people, but finally they acquired the sawmill of their own and he more or less took that over completely. That became his thing. And uh other people ran, but they still had the bottling works and he still worked in, at times, but his main occupation became the lumber business.

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Abraham Duke
1950

Credits:
Photograph courtesy of Eddie Duke

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This is Abraham Duke, also known as Abrom, A-b-r-o-m. My mother always called him Abrom. And uh, he came here actually about 1928 or twenty-nine. (Marlene commented, "Father of Eddie Duke.") Father of Eddie Duke. And he had been working in the Rouyn, Amos, Val-d'Or area actually. Uh, taking care of a string of slot machines to be honest, and vending machines, coin operated machines. And he had run into this job when he was struggling to make a living as a photographer in Trois Rivieres, and he got to know Kirkland Lake and liked Kirkland Lake and decided to settle here. And he did. And he built an apartment building and lived happily ever after.

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Seymour and Aidlebaum early 1930's
3 July 2003
Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada

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Well anyway, around this time, in the thirties too, people were coming into Kirkland Lake and opening businesses. Both Seymour Sukerman, who came here in the thirties, early thirties and uh, oh, my ski friend? (Marlene suggested "Aidelbaum") Seymour Sukerman and Mr. Aidelbaum, whose first name I don't know . . . Saul . . . Saul Aidelbaum, both arrived in town in the thirties and both came as peddlers. They were selling whatever goods they had from door to door. They had come from Montreal where they were finding it very tough to make a living and they moved into Kirkland Lake and brought their wives, and there were children came. They both decided after a while, after working as peddlers in town, to open their businesses and Seymour Sukerman took a small store on Government Road. There had been a new building built there, and there were two stores, one side was Seymour's, a little small store that was no more than twelve feet wide and probably forty feet long, you know, and my brother Morris took the other half of that building and established his move from Duncan Avenue, where he had been operating a studio at 37 Duncan and moved on to Government Road, and they both did quite well during the thirties. The town was booming. There were a lot of weddings.
Seymour was very good with clothes. He was an expert at measuring people and he was a very snappy dresser himself. He spoke French fluently. He employed . . . one of his chief salesman was French, and the other one was not French, but he was very popular, a golfer and he later had the shoe store, (Marlene suggested "Polyblank") . . . Polyblank, Jack Polyblank, and he had another, I've forgotten the name of the Frenchman. He was a really nice guy who later went into business for himself. But Seymour used to advertise in French and he, on the radio, and he catered to the French trade in fact a lot of people thought that he was French.
I remember one time I was being introduced to Bishop Rheaume when he was here. I was doing some work at the time in the church. They had an ordination. And while everybody was outside I was then called to be introduced to the bishop, and he held out his hand and I kissed his ring. I wasn't sure whether I should, but that was what everybody else was doing and, of course, he said, "Enchante de faire votre connaisance." And I replied, "Ju suis enchante de faire votre connaisance." And we spoke a few words in French and my French is not really great but it wasn't too bad either. I could carry on a conversation cause I had lived in Quebec for many, I was raised there, and finally the bishop said to me, "Je ne savais pas que vous Jtais franHais." He said, "I didn't know that you were French." So a voice from the back came up, it was one of their priests, who was a younger priest whom I knew well, and whose name I've forgotten at the moment, and whom I used to speak to quite often when I was doing weddings there, and he said "Mais oui. Il est Fran�ais, pareille exactement comme Seymour." (Marlene asked for a translation.) He says, "He's French, exactly like Seymour." which of course everybody got the joke except for the bishop. Everybody burst out laughing but the bishop didn't get the joke. But anyway that was what happened when I met the bishop. He said, "He's French, exactly like Seymour." So that was, uh . . .
Then as I say, Aidelbaum did quite well and opened a men's wear, then into a ladies' wear. When his son finally . . . his son Abe was very, very interested in skiing. And did a great deal to establish the local ski club and then switched his activities to the Raven Mountain Ski Club, which he was really instrumental in the building of. And of course Marion was interested in the ladies' wear business and she more or less took over, after Abe was married to Marion Kokotow, she took over that department.