DRUG STORE MEMORIES

ECE 56-4
Mikkola's Pharmacy 1976

From 2006 Interview with Paul Foulds:

"I bought the Drug Store in 1988 which I sold four years ago so I had it basically for 15 years.  There was a computer at the time we first started there but it was very basic.  When I first started apprenticing we had electric typewriters and we still had the old manual typewriters even to type up certain labels on the side or if the electricity went out we could still sell prescriptions.  It was a good thing I took my grade nine typing, too. 

Wilbur Mikkola owned the drug store before I bought it and he would have owned it from 1971 until December 1987. When we first signed the deal and took ownership of the Pharmacy my first day of work was "Black Tuesday" when the stock market dropped in October and I thought, "What are we doing!"

As a pharmacist it's unique because not only are you a professional there, you're a business owner and if you don't have someone else come in and fill your space you have to physically be in the building for the amount of hours that the store was open.

The Thompsons were in the same building as Saunders and then when Wilbur bought the Pharmacy off Mr. Thompson there was a fire at that time.

Thompson's Drug Store left of Clover Farm. ECE - 56-1  1968

Wilbur was born and raised in Nipigon so he had a lot of history coming through and working for Thompson as a fourteen year old student to save money so he could go to school. He apprenticed under Morris Thompson and there were other fellows from around here that apprenticed, like the Waghorns that grew up here and also one of the Ruoho boys is a professor at the University of Wisconsin now.

So when Wilbur took over he had a rough first couple years too because after the fire he had moved over by Home Hardware where the MTO had their office. Within a week he had to move his shop over to that building. I remember going in that building when I was a kid and how cramped it was in there but it was the only building at the time that I guess he could find.

I retired in August, 2003 and I actually still worked up until December of last year. I had to keep working until they found somebody to come and take over which was Jonah Dupuis."