1928 -- 2009 Arch Brown

OBITUARY: Local business pioneer dead at 81

Posted By MARG. BRUINEMAN

Posted 2 months ago

Some remember Arch Brown standing at the top of the escalator in the old Bayfield Street Canadian Tire store asking people if they needed help. Some remember him from one of the many Chamber, Rotary or committee meetings and events he attended. And some might know him from his namesake, the Helen and Arch Brown Centre for Visual Arts at Georgian College.

During his 46 years in Barrie, Arch Brown was omnipresent.

The Barrie entrepreneur and philanthropist died Monday evening.

"I'm definitely going to miss him a lot," said Sybil Goruk, executive director of the Greater Barrie Chamber of Commerce.

During a poignant moment at last week's Barrie Business Awards Gala, Goruk found herself standing alone without Mr. Brown for the first time to present the Arch Brown Entrepreneur Award of Excellence. In a touching moment, local businessman Jamie Massie stepped in to help present the award to Donna Douglas.

The event included a special tribute to Mr. Brown.

"It was a special thing that we wanted to do because he couldn't be there," Goruk said.

Mr. Brown is known in Barrie for his Canadian Tire store and many other business exploits and clubs. He was also known for his involvement in Georgian College since its inception and promoting Barrie on numerous committees and escapades. And he had a close relationship with CFB Borden, proudly wearing the uniform of honorary colonel.

"He was such a great community builder," said Georgian College president Brian Tamblyn, whose family friendship with Brown dates back to childhood in the 1960s. "Even to this day, he was on our Power of Education campaign cabinet (to raise $25 million)."

During the past two years, Georgian has saluted Mr. Brown in two very special ways. First by giving him an honorary degree. The entrepreneur never bothered with post-secondary education, and it never held him back, but he recognized its importance and became one of Georgian's biggest supporters.

And last January, about 1,000 people gathered to honour Arch and Helen Brown during a special ceremony.

His trek from his birthplace in Vancouver to his proud home in Barrie is one that, in many ways, mirrored the time.

Throughout his life, Mr. Brown never shied away from the limelight, or the media. He began making headlines as a Toronto teenager who hitchhiked across the country, keeping a diary. He did radio interviews about making his way to England via a horse boat heading for Poland.

In his self-published memoirs, It's a Long Way From Tobermory, Brown chronicles the many paths of his ambitions. His early career was shaped by his intense interest to explore and travel. This eventually led him to Trans-Canada Air Lines in 1948 at age 21. After three years, he landed a six-month appointment at the company's office in Nassau, Bahamas.

He moved over to General Motors Products of Canada, where he remained for five years before receiving a call from former school chum, Dick Billes, then vice-president of Canadian Tire and the son of the company's founder. Billes was in search of a sales manager and he eventually promised that if Mr. Brown did a good job, the company would help him finance his own store.

During his corporate years with the building chain, Mr. Brown was credited with introducing Canadian Tire money, helping to establish 70 new dealerships and placing or transferring 120 associate dealers.

He did land his own store in 1963 at the age of 35. The store in Barrie was unsuccessful at that point, so, almost immediately, Mr. Brown fired all the employees. He then rehired 20 of the original 25 at double their old salary. Then he doubled the advertising expenditures and challenged a bylaw calling for Wednesday afternoon store closures, expanding the store hours.

Quickly realizing the value of newsworthy coverage, Mr. Brown s community involvement and made sure the store supported community activities and fundraising drives. When parking became an issue he bought the surrounding homes and had them torn down -- that included the demolition of the original Royal Victoria Hospital on High Street, after it had moved to Ross Street.

It was not long before he got to know Janice Laking, who would later become mayor of Barrie.

"We go back a long way and the city is going to miss him," she said. "He was the most involved member of the community that was never elected.

"Anything that the city was doing he wanted to be involved in.... He just liked to be at the forefront of things that happened."

Donna Douglas had just moved to Barrie and was renting a house next to Canadian Tire when it was on Dunlop Street, where the Downtown Centre now sits. The store's parking lot was a favourite place for would-be racers and stunt-car drivers, resulting in many sleepless nights for Douglas. So she made an appointment to see the store's owner and met Mr. Brown for the first time.

After establishing that concrete blocks would be more of an impediment than a help and determining that little could be done, Douglas asked about a punching bag hanging in his office. He explained that he never wanted to go into the community angry, so if he had a short fuse he could deal with it before going out in the community. That sentiment resonated for Douglas.

"It was the beginning of a lovely business relationship," she said of that meeting nearly 40 years ago.

Within his first year of owning the Barrie store, Mr. Brown was seeing the first profits the store had turned in several years. He pioneered profit sharing to his employees on the retail level and credits that move to the success of his business.

Brown took the store from downtown into the new Bayfield Mall in 1976 when the surrounding area was virtually barren of any other buildings. At first, Mr. Brown thought the naysayers might be right -- he was losing money. But that only lasted for six months. The profits returned and increased.

From the time he bought the store in 1963 to his retirement in 1995 the store's sales increased 80-fold from $300,000 to $26 million in 1992. During those years, his store set many records, including being the largest Canadian Tire store in the country until 1993.

Between 1998 and 1999 Brown suffered six strokes, four minor and two more serious, paralyzing his right side. In his memoirs, he recalls that a fall while chasing squirrels from the gazebo outside his Barrie Terrace home may have been the catharsis. The next day at Barrie's annual Kempenfest, Brown found himself "walking like a drunken sailor."

At the end of the day, in search of strong headache medicine, a pharmacist encouraged him to get to a hospital right away. Within two hours he was in an ambulance heading for St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, suffering from a blood clot in his brain. After being transferred back to Barrie's Royal Victoria Hospital he had his first stroke.

The stroke affected his memory, "not so much the distant past, but the recent past was wiped out." He also lost his ability to concentrate on reading.

But Mr. Brown fought back and be out in the community.

Earlier this fall, when the Browns' home on Terrace Drive became the Estate on the Bay design showcase project for the United Way of Greater Simcoe County, Helen Brown described her husband's house-building efforts during retirement.

"Arch just wanted the project," she said about the construction of their 10,000-square-foot house, which is for sale. "He always wanted a project."

Many will also remember the Browns for their passion for the arts.

Don Stuart, himself a member of the Order of Canada, worked at Georgian College's textile and weaving program and launched the jewelry and metals program, all the while working on his own art and jewelry. It was during the early days of studio tours that Stuart met the Browns.

"He was the one who made our area artist-friendly," said Stuart. "He bought their artwork, promoted them and gave art as gifts. At the college we used to have a student craft show... and he was always one of the first ones there."

In recent years, Mr. Brown had Stuart create an eight-foot cross for St. Andrew's Church to mark Helen's birthday, as well as the couple's 50th anniversary.

"What he wanted was a piece of artwork at the church that people would want to look at," said Stuart, who considers himself one of Mr. Brown's beneficiaries. "And that's what it's become. People still come to see it."

A service to remember Arch Brown will be held, but the details still have to be finalized.

news@thebarrieexaminer.com

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We want your stories

The Barrie Examiner is looking for your fond memories and stories of Arch Brown.

Brown, also known as 'Mr. Barrie', passed away Monday. He was 81.

The Examiner would like you to e-mail your stories to news@thebarrieexaminer.com, send them by fax to 705-725-7717, or drop them off at 571 Bayfield St. N.

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Meaning behind the word 'chay'

(STAFF) -- After visiting Hawaii and falling in love with the many meanings of aloha, Brown set out to find something, a word, that exemplified his own home. He found it in "chay" and promptly set out to include it as a local custom.

"Chay" was used by the Hurons who inhabited this area and the word appears in Champlain's diary as a greeting frequently used.

When he launched a local radio station with his partners, they adopted CHAY as their call letters and Brown thought it would be a great way to promote 'chay' as a local greeting. But the effort misfired.

By using it as a corporate name, the use of the word "chay" would be seen as a promotion of the radio station, Brown learned following a pitch to Simcoe County council.

That didn't dissuade him altogether. "Chay" appear throughout the Browns' lives. Their boats were all called Chay Aboard, the first house was Chay Wood and the second Chay View.