NewmarketToday welcomes your letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication).
Re: 'Sad to see': Newmarket's Tannery Mall a legendary story of decline, Sept. 9, 2024.
As an old timer who grew up in Newmarket from 1959 to 1975, what puzzles me is how and why all industry collapsed in our town.
I recall it as being almost self-sufficient with Davis Leather, and a lovely diner next to it that had a real dairy at its rear. And next to that was Dixon Pencil, the products of which we used at Maple Leaf Public School.
But there was a lot more, like Beaver Lumber, across the road, and Office Specialty, and a new Newmarket High School. Also, behind Pickering College, was the College Farm where I worked summers stocking straw onto carts.
There was also Brown’s Bread and another dairy just off Main by the new the fire hall.
There was also S.E. Woods at the south end of town that made great camper trailers for a huge nationwide market. I worked a summer there as it de-tooled. Sad!
So what happened? I don’t mean that they all shut down, but why and who allowed it? Was it Brian Mulroney’s NAFTA? I don’t know but I would like to.
Sadly, back then I failed to appreciate how great Newmarket was before some possible conspiracy shut it down. Government at all levels should have seen this coming, just as they should have predicted GWG jeans out West would be shuttered after letting the American Levi jeans buy it out and shutter it.
Since leaving Newmarket, I’ve spent more than four decades in the East (Beijing, Shenyang, Guangdong, Phnom Penh, Hong Kong, and Taipei). Here out East a lot of people have guts to fight trends and pour out their guts out to save a home industry. I deeply miss my Newmarket as I recall it, and dread seeing what they have done to it.
So please investigate the guilty, be they mayors, planners, developers, premiers, MPs, or owners who sold out and gutted the soul of our town.
Curtis Smith
Taipei City, Taiwan
