A little history, we've been here for almost 70 years!

Al Flaherty's

Al Flaherty's

Supporting Dealer
Business Member
Rating - 98.4%
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Location
2066 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario, M6E3R6
Funny how time flies, some things change, some stay the same. We found these great photos on the Toronto Archives, but without date stamps!





Can anyone identify the classic cars in these photos? We'd love to get an idea for when the shots where taken!

Just above Rogers Road at Dufferin and Eversfield looking North. Eglinton Avenue sure looks different! Interestingly enough, the animal hospital across the street from us is still operating as well!

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Just above Rogers Road at Dufferin and Eversfield Looking South, some things change, some things stay the same. I'm pretty sure we've still got the same telephone poles out front, haha.

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With almost 70 years operating here in Toronto, we couldn't imagine being anywhere else!
The street scenery may change, but we will keep on offering Canadian outdoors enthusiasts the
same great service we've always been known for, whether it's 1947 or 2016!
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blstv said:
70% off sale?
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We'll do it BP style, we'll have 1 item at 70% off and everything else jacked up 5% ;)

The_Shmoo said:
Better parking back then, at least. I consider it a victory if I don't have to use the Green P across the street.
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Yeah, but it would've been harder to park on the side without a winch ;)

We try to keep parking under control, but inevitably between the bar across Dufferin & the funeral home across Eversfield there's a lot of cars that end up there which perhaps should not
 
congrats ,,i just ordered some stuff from you second time was very impressed the first time
good service fast shipping good pricing ,,gets my loyalty
 
Congratulations, boys and girls! Here's to 70 more!

...and yes, Al's most certainly does have some of the best pricing around. Key to maintaining good prices: own your building, and have relationships with suppliers that are older than most members here ;)
 
Once I saw this on reddit I figured it would be here too. Here's what I posted on reddit about what I found out when searching for the age of the photos:

It's hard to tell, but license plates back then all had years on the plate, and I think they got replaced every year. Only one plate is legible, B-33896, but the year in the top-right is too small to be read. According to Wikipedia, the style of license plate it uses was first introduced in 1966. We see according to Wikipedia that they alternated between blue letters on a white background and white letters on a blue background, and that this format was used until 1971, with 1972 introducing the ABC-123 format and "Keep it Beautiful" slogan.

Given that this is a white-on-blue plate, it means it is from one of 1967, 1969, or 1970. In the second photo we can see some other plates, but not well enough to tell for sure exactly what all their numbers are, but they do follow the expected format according to Wikipedia.

This actually taught me something too, it taught me that my grandfather had the same plates since sometime between 1978 and 1982, since his said "Keep it Beautiful" on them.

EDIT: I need to make some corrections. I decided to actually search up the plates from those years, and they didn't have the crown and Ontario on the top, just the year. 1967 also had "Confederation" on it and 19 and 67 in the corners. I then decided to look up plates from before 1966. 1965 was a white-on-blue plate with the right kind of format. 1964 it was black-on-white. 1963 it was white-on-black, and it did this in a format the same as what we see on each of those cars up until 1955, with every odd year being black. However, 1963 is the only year with a white border all the way around the plate. From the photo with the visible plate, B-33896, it seems like it has a white border all the way around the plate.

This means the plate is actually from either 1965 or 1963, with 1963 being more likely since the plate does actually look darker than I think the blue would show up as. However, if we take that border as being a cover for the plate on the car, it could be from any time between 1955 and 1963. However, given that some people on reddit have said one of the cars on the street in one picture is from the early '60s, that means the picture is from either 1961 or 1963.

To add to this, we see the Union Jack flying on the business across the street, which is a little odd, since it looks like an apartment building. The Canadian flag was first introduced in 1965 in February. This means the picture is likely from before then.
 
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Impressive for any business to stay in business for 70 years, but it's doubly impressive for a sporting goods store, battling not only market forces, but the continuous onslaught of enlightened legislation. I know there are several businesses here in Calgary that have come and gone in that period, some in my own 30 years. Well done, and here's for another 70 - maybe we'll then be discussing the hilarity of our primitive 'ground vehicles' :p
 
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