Ken Hill can remember starting his legal career at Newmarket firm Stiver Vale back in 1978.
Hill started as a junior lawyer for the firm and stayed on for 10 years. Long located at 193-197 Main St. South, Stiver Vale was a fixture on the downtown street for years and a place where many started their legal profession, Hill said.
With Stiver Vale preparing to move, Hill and others gathered in January to say farewell and reminisce.
“It just feels like a bit of York Region, Newmarket history is disappearing,” Hill said.
After some time on the market, the owners of the Stiver Vale building have now sold it. Stiver Vale is preparing to move to a new location by March, while new ownership makes renovations for a new tenant in the historic Main Street building.
The law firm Stiver Vale itself dates back to 1926, with Kenneth Stiver establishing the practice in a one-room office on Botsford Street, according to a historical newspaper record provided by local historian Richard MacLeod. He would join with several other lawyers to form Matthews, Stiver, Lyons and Vale, before the firm was split between Newmarket and Toronto in the 1950s and took on the present name in Newmarket. By then, the firm was set up at its current location on Main Street South.
The firm was consistently the top legal firm in the area, Hill said.
“It was the largest law firm in York Region at one point,” he said. “Lawyers come and go…but it was consistently one of the leading law firms in the area,” he said.
But the firm has changed over the years, with only one lawyer there in recent years. The business website has indicated that the name will carry on at a new location starting in March. NewmarketToday did not receive any reply to a request for comment.
Regardless, the building has new ownership and tenants coming in. Local realtor Darcy Toombs said ownership prefers not to talk to media at this point, but big changes are in store for the building. For lease banners are hung on the building.
“I can tell you that they are planning on investing a lot of money in the building and restoring it to more of a retail look, as it was pre-1970s,” Toombs said.
Hill said it was pleasant to meet up with old members of the firm. He said that during his time, senior lawyers were quite involved in the community.
But Hill did not lament the upcoming move and change.
“I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a bad thing that the firm’s not there anymore. It’s just part of a history, it had its day,” Hill said.