Silver Snail Hamilton Opening

Here is an advert, rediscovered in the centre pages of Bill Marks flagship publication, Vortex, number four.

Vortex #4, is dated for July of 1983,

so that is as close as I am likely to get, to the moment of the Hamilton location's birth.

The years have sort of mashed everything together, in my head and I wouldn't have been able to say exactly when Ron opened the Hamilton branch of the Snail.  It came as a surprise, when I realized that it fell in the same year as the move of the Toronto store, from 323 to 367 Queen Street West.

At that time, Andromeda, the distribution side of Ron's small empire, was beginning to make more money than the Silver Snail was and Ron had moved into a CEO role, over both companies, with Mark Askwith becoming the manager of the Toronto store.

Ken Steacy did a beautiful job of designing the mascot, eventually christened "Bobo", by Rob Walton, and the image in the lower right corner of the advert, was, in my opinion, one of the best ever used on the store's bags.

Only one more thing to add.

The original painting, by Paul Rivoche, that is shown on the left hand side of the advert, was hanging in the cafe section of the New Silver Snail and I had made a gentle enquiry, over a year ago, as to whether the new owners were interested in selling it.

They never did get back to me and I noticed, two weeks ago, that the space on the wall, where it had once hung, was now vacant.  I am guessing that either someone stole it, or that they received a more forceful offer and sold it.

Whatever.