Shoppoff’s Confectionary and Shoppy Electric.

Shoppoff, Vasil (Bill) & Anastasia
Children: Ida, Nicholas
Hearst Relatives: Fortier.

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What a treat! A luscious double-decker chocolate ice cream cone on a hot summer day in Hearst. From where, you ask? None other than Shoppoff’s, right in the middle of downtown George Street. The shop was quaint with the round tables and matching chairs so common of that era, situated in the back half of the room.

As one entered, there were counters stacked with candy and chocolate, and on the right was the freezer full of tubs of Eplett’s ice cream. Not only double-deckers were available, but also the twin side-by-side cones that afforded the choice of two flavours. There was not the variety of choice available today. We were happy with the old standbys – vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, butterscotch. The ice cream parlour was an important institution decades ago, because the household refrigerator of the day (for people who had one) had a problem keeping ice cream in its solid state.

Vasil Shoppoff, born in 1891, was another Bulgarian, like the Chalykoffs, who grew up in the town of Varbitsa. Vasil immigrated to Canada in 1918. That was the year a killer flu epidemic was wreaking havoc among the population. Bill, as he was now called, professed to have been spared the dreaded disease by wearing a collar of fresh garlic. His first job was in Timmins, working in the Hollinger Gold Mine. There, he suffered a broken back and was confined to a nine-month recuperation period in the hospital. When Bill came to Hearst in the early ’20s, he was welcomed by his friend, Slavko Drajanoff, who owned a building on Front Street, two or three doors east of Nevala’s store. The building housed Drajanoff’s store and living quarters.

The days were long, and Bill was hankering to have a family of his own. At the substantial cost of $100, he advertised for a mail-order bride in a Bulgarian newspaper. To his delight, an answer was forthcoming. She was twenty-three-year-old Anastasia V. Michaylova, born in the town of Trinova, Bulgaria, on June 1, 1901. From her hometown, laden with her precious possessions, Anastasia travelled to Cherbourg, France, and on October 11, 1924, she boarded the Empress of Scotland, sailed across the Atlantic and docked in Quebec City seven days later.

After arriving in Hearst, Anastasia had six months to decide whether to marry Bill or not; however, human emotions being what they are, they were wed November 3, 1924, at the home of the Drajanoff family. The Rev. Thomas McReynolds of the Anglican church officiated. Mary and Stella Drajanoff were the witnesses.

Soon Bill and Anastasia opened an ice cream parlour in Drajanoff’s building. Shortly thereafter, in 1926, a daughter, Ida, was born and a son, Nick, in 1928.

Interestingly, there is a record of the purchase of the property on George Street in which Shoppoff’s Confectionary Store was situated for many years. The building, Lot 164, was purchased from Alice Brisson on August 27, 1934. The price was $1,100; $50 down, $50 on September 10 and $25 a month at an interest rate of five per cent, starting October 15, 1934. Tom Tremblay, who sold insurance for many years, drew up the original agreement.

Sadly, Bill died in hospital in Toronto in 1939, at the age of forty-eight. Anastasia, with the help of Ida, continued operating the store until her untimely death in 1956, at the age of fifty-four. Anastasia took great pleasure in the frequent visits of Dr. Penu Chalykoff when they would have long conversations in Bulgarian and English. Ida inherited the store that by then had evolved into a gift shop. In 1959, she sold the business to her brother, Nick, when she married Claude Clavelle in Kapuskasing. Nick, busy with his own electrical business (Shoppy Electric), rented the premises to Eddie Won, who transformed it into a Chinese restaurant for six years. Following that, it was sold to Prince’s Smoke Shop.

By then, Nick was married to Monique Fortier and en route to raising a family of four boys. Nick was also a skilled boxer, who trained many of the Hearst youth in the skills of pugilism, including Terry West, Roger Comeau, Michael Wade, Jean-Guy Carrière and Dr. Lucien Jacques. He organized a few bouts in Hearst between locals and the airmen from the U.S. radar base at Lowther. In the early ’50s, Nick and Jack McNabb, a Sault Ste. Marie fighter, put on a very entertaining bout.