User:Rsgoodlawster/sandbox/Goodman Co.

Goodman Co. A pair of European Jewish brothers from a cabinet maker’s family gave Pictou County their first departmental store, Vineberg & Goodman, Later Goodman Co. Harry and Solomon Goodman. Harry, the older, born November 1879, at twelve was an apprentice clerk in a shop, after having shown no interest in cabinet making. He acquired knowledge in clothing and retailing, dreamed of a future in the new world, and saved his money. He accumulated forty gulden to finance an Atlantic crossing to Quebec, where he landed in 1900. To be admitted to Canada one had to satisfy the immigration officials that one had cash of at least five dollars. He had a five-dollar gold piece for that purpose. He worked in Montreal as a packing clerk and in a half year he saved fifty dollars and from that time was self-employed. A man he had met in Quebec, Sam Vineberg, offered him a partnership in a trading venture. Enter the business scene Vineberg & Goodman. They hired a schooner and stocked it with clothing, cloth, watches, and glassware. Harry was the working partner. He took charge of the schooner, sailed to the Labrador coast, and exchanged the cargo for furs, barrelled salt fish, cod liver oil in buckets, and a little cash. The Schooner was nearly lost in a storm. At one place the Hudson’s Bay Company factor, during bad weather, refused permission to land, but relented. It was a hard life in a harsh time in a harsh place, but at the end of the season Harry was safe in Quebec, and the project netted two thousand dollars, one half of which was his. He was twenty-one. Sam Vineberg, an older man and established in business, took kindly to the young immigrant, struggling to learn English and French, and to build his life in Canada. The partnership continued by setting up small stores in Rimouski, Riviere De Loup and Cabano. Harry was joined in the active partnership by Sam Vineberg’s son Joe. The Partners were attracted to Pictou County by the coal and steel industries’ optimistic outlook. Harry, in words spoken long afterwards, “liked the look of New Glasgow”. He rented from Fawn McDearmid, Vendome Hotel Proprietor, the Chambers Building, a three-storey wooden structure at the southern extremity of Provost Street, at annual rent of $300.00 it was 1904, the year in which the Allan Shaft opened and the Flaherty brothers Charles and Leonard T. began tram car service. To establish their New Glasgow store, the partners moved stock from, and sold out, their other three stores. New Glasgow’s population was 4,000. Later the partnership opened a store in Halifax operated by Joe Vineberg. Harry Goodman married Clara Vineberg, Sam’s daughter. They settled in New Glasgow in 1904, The Vineberg-Goodman business association continued until 1931, when total ownership passed to the Goodman brothers Harry and Solomon, in the name of Goodman Company Ltd. Harry had been a silent partner, until then, in Vineberg stores in Montreal and Ottawa. Sam Vineberg’s sons continued in business in Ottawa, with a large departmental store named “Laroque”, in the Rideau Street main business area, until 1972. Solomon Goodman, born July 1884, like Harry when a lad was apprenticed as a clerk to a shopkeeper, a dealer in woollens, silks, and cottons. In 1907 Solomon married Jeanette Gropper of Rawauk, Rumania. He too saw a future in Canada, saved his money and by 1909 had accumulated the price of a single passage, and enough left to help support his wife who must stay in Rumania for the time being. He took ship to Halifax, worked for two years as a clerk, brought out his wife in 1910, and the next year moved to New Glasgow to begin partnership Harry and the latter’s Vineberg in-laws. The Solomon Goodman’s lived in New Glasgow until 1946.

Before Solomon’s arrival Harry had moved the business to the corner of Provost and MacLean Streets, in a building occupied by a merchant, one Johnson. 

In succeeding years Harry and Solomon Goodman purchased two buildings to their north on Provost Street, and expanded their store into them, occupying two floors for a half-block length on Provost Street. The Itzit Theatre was built in 1917 on part of the old shipyard area (Parking Ground in 1975) and was connected to Provost Street by a tunnel beneath the railway tracks. The Itzit Theatre closed in about 1920, and the Goodman’s took over the tunnel entrance, calling it “Bargain Ally” and stocking it with low price goods. The firm grew to thirty-four departments. Solomon supervised advertising and the departments other than ladies coats, dresses, millinery, which Harry supervised. From the start dry goods was a staple. A branch was opened at Truro in 1929, and at Antigonish in 1932. Goodman's was the county’s first “big” advertisers, consistently employing full pages in newspapers to attract customers. When in the late 1920’s the firm engaged a show card painter-designer and window dresser, Robert Courtenay from Halifax, to be fully engaged in these activities, it was considered a daring step. Courtenay was succeeded by another artisan, Fred Houlde, brought from Montreal. The long disused Itzit was bought by the Goodman’s in 1929 and converted into a warehouse. The building was remodelled in 1936, with retail departments on the first floor, warehouse on the second, and the “Goodman Auditorium” on the third, a public meeting place which became the County’s premier location for balls, and was used as a concert and meeting hall. There Pictonians heard their first Community Concert (circa 1938, lonian Singers, a male quartette). During the Second War the Auditorium was quarters for training and the officer’s mess of the 2nd Battalion Pictou Highlanders, and for some years afterwards for the peacetime Reserve Force. Harry’s five children were born in New Glasgow. The oldest son Hyman J. was born in 1908, attended Acadia University, and after merchandizing experience in Ottawa at Vineburg's Laroque joined the firm. During WW2 he served as a training officer with the Canadian Army rank of Captain. The second son, Waldo, born 1910, graduated B.Comm. Dalhousie University, also entered the business. In the Second War he served overseas as Lieut. with the North Nova Highlanders. Upon father’s death Waldo became the Goodman Company President. The third son, Bernard, born 1913, graduated B. Comm. Dalhousie, and assumed management of the Truro branch. The fourth son, Nordau, born 1919, took a B.Sc. and the Governor General’s Medal for scholarship proficiency at Dalhousie in 1940. He served overseas in France and Belgium with the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps as a captain, and returned to Dalhousie where he took his M.Sc. in 1946. That year he was chosen Nova Scotia’s Rhodes Scholar to Oxford, and in 1950 graduated with his Ph.D. (Geology). Dr. Goodman was awarded the Barlowe Memorial Medal of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. At Oxford 1950-52 he was Demonstrator in Minerology. From 1952-57 he was Associate Professor of Geology at Dalhousie University. Upon returning to New Glasgow as a member of the firm, he continued in practise as a consultant geologist and as a lecturer. The Harry Goodman family has had a close association with public service. Harry was a Knight of Pythias, and Rotary International. His four sons became Rotarians. Hyman District Governor of Rotary 7820 in 1974. He has held office in the local and Maritime Provinces Chamber of Commerce. He was the founding president of the Community Concert Association. Waldo has been actively associated with the latter group and with the Music Festival Society. Bernard was president of the Truro Rotary Club. Dr. Nordau was an original member of the Pictou County Research and Development Commission (Picord). The Goodman family’s relationship with the Boy Scout movement has been long and keen. In 1920 Hy Goodman and his neighbor, the late John Nicholson, discovered that each was a “Lone Scout”, - members of and American organization which offered to boys living in places without boy scout facilities affiliation in the Lone Scout organization – and thus came Scouting to Pictou County. Hy and his friends met in his father’s barn, at rear of the Goodman home on East River Road. There the first New Glasgow Boy Scout Troop was born, and there it met until moving to the Wilson Institute in early 1920’s. In Maturity, the Goodman boys assisted Scouting, notably Waldo, who served as a Scoutmaster, and in 1965 was decorated for thirty-nine consecutive years of service to Scouting. Harry Goodman died in 1960. Harry and Solomon Goodman’s partnership dissolved in 1946. Harry and his sons retained the Goodman Company Ltd. In New Glasgow, Antigonish, and Truro Nova Scotia. Solomon opened Goodman Textiles Ltd., a new concern, on Spring Garden Road in Halifax. The Goodman brothers for a short period were in the theatre business. Solomon in the early 1930’s acquired a substantial interest in the Jubilee Theatre in Stellarton. He and Harry next bought the controlling interest in the Roseland Theatre Company, which operated the Roseland and Academy of Music. After two years Harry sold all, and Solomon the most of his interest in the Roseland Company, to a local group headed by N.W. Mason, from whom they had bought it, and Solomon sold to Frank H. Sobey his Jubilee Theatre interest. Solomon had four daughters, all born in New Glasgow. Edith, born 1913, died 1940, was a graduate librarian. Ruth, born 1915, a science graduate of Dalhousie, married Irving Pink, a Yarmouth lawyer. Rose, born 1919, graduated B.A. from Dalhousie University. She was commissioned in the wartime RCAF as a Section Officer, and died in a plane crash in Sask. in 1943, the first Canadian Female to die in active duty in WW2. Her parents gave to the Girl Guides of Pictou County the Rose Jette Goodman Memorial Camp at Edgerton. The third daughter, Annetta, was born in 1924, graduated as a social worker. A brother of Harry Solomon, Dr. Abraham Guttman, a scientist, came to Canada, a political refugee, after the Second War. Before the war he had owned and managed a factory in Bukovinia, Rumania, for manufacturing medical and hospital supplies. The factory was first taken over by the the Russians and then by the invading Nazis.Many of his wife's family were murdured. Dr. Guttman’s fate was unknown to his brothers for a half dozen year. He was located by the International Red Cross at the request of the Canadian Government, and with his wife and daughter, Martha Blum, and the latter’s husband, settled in Halifax. A son, Willy, moved to the newly formed state of Israel.

Goodman Company continued in business in New Glasgow until 1985 employing hundreds of Pictonians and participating in a significant way in the economic and community betterment of the town. Indeed, in the early 1960s it employed Elmer Cromwell, the first black full-time employee working in downtown, New Glasgow. By the mid-1980s it was evident that no one from the succeeding generation was interested in taking over the family business. About a year earlier the operation in Antigonish was liquidated and the building sold to Antigonish developer Brian MacLeod who subsequently converted the large building into a shopping complex now called Kirk place. Truro was liquidated about the same time by brother Bernie.

After a few years of vacancy New Glasgow lawyer Richard (Rick) Goodman Q.C. persuaded Antigonish developer and nursing home operator Brian MacLeod to do a joint venture with he and Lawyer Greg MacDonald Q.C. by converting the New Glasgow buildings into a similar development to that that was so successful in Antigonish. By late 1988 Goodman Place was a reality with all spaces occupied on the ground floor and with the main tenant of the second floor on the Provost Street side the Law firm of Goodman MacDonald Patterson. The main floor anchor tenant on the Provost Street side was China Cupboard & Gifts Limited initiated by Lawyer Rick and operated by his wife Nancy and then partner Anne MacDonald , and after a time by Nancy alone.

Eventually the partners of Goodman Place sold out to Mr. MacLeod upon the purchase of another downtown building, Castle Hall. China Cupboard moved across the street but continued in operation for 28 years as the continuation of the Goodman retail tradition and with a new partner after a time Trenton Mayor Cathy Cotter. Today as an online store only www.chinacupboard.ns.ca under Rick Goodman’s Holding Company. Subsequently Mr. MacLeod sold out his interests to a local business man Wayne Harris.

Rick Goodman was awarded his Queens Counsel in 1997 and continued the Goodman Family philosophy of community service in Pictou County by involvement with a number of organizations including the Board of Directors of the The Nova Scotia Museum of industry, Aberdeen Health foundation and the Rotary Club of New Glasgow as its President and various Directorships. In 2014 Rick’s law firm of Goodman MacDonald merged its legal practice with one of Nova Scotia’s largest law firms to bring to Pictou County the resources of Patterson Law.

An update of an article written some years ago by Pictou County historian, James M. Cameron.

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