An Interpretation
Edmonton's Popcorn Man and Town Crier
by Lawrence Herzog
If I close my eyes and breathe deeply, I can still smell the popcorn that Sam Cherniak made from his pushcart on the street north of the King Edward Hotel, on 102 nd Avenue just west of 101 st Street. Sam was called "The Popcorn Man," and, credited as the first person to sell it on the street in Edmonton, he most certainly was.
To a child growing up in Edmonton, his popcorn wagon was the stuff of magic. If the wind was right, I could smell Sam's popcorn a half a block away down by the old Rialto Theatre.
Following my nostrils, I would round the corner at the King Eddy, and there was Sam, portly and balding, loading the corn into the kettle, filling up bags and smiling at his customers. His contraption used to remind me of the machinery at the summer midway at the Exhibition Grounds and, captivated by the sensations, I could have stood there and watched him for hours.
"Try Sam's Popcorn" it said on one end of the cart and, for 33 years, thousands of people did just that. Cherniak first popped corn and sold it on the street in 1938 and he was there most every day, year after year, through all sorts of weather.
Well into the twilight of his life, he refused to give up his beloved popcorn wagon and he finally retired in 1971 at the age of 82. Sam had been right there on "his corner" for so many years that it's hard to think of him doing anything else.
Yet, he had led a full life even before popping corn. In an interview with Journal staff writer Ken Preston in 1963, he talked about the life he lived and the jobs he had done. He was born in Austria and emigrated to Canada early this century, travelling and working across the continent.
Sam worked in an Ontario foundry for 15 cents an hour. He cleared paths for log hauling horses in British Columbia, fired donkey engines in Washington State, tamped railway ties in Medicine Hat and sold donuts in Duluth, Minnesota.
The story goes that he tired of the donut business and sold it to a Japanese entrepreneur for $1,500 - a significant chunk of change in those days. Using those proceeds, Sam came to Alberta and opened a general store in Mannville and then a pool room in Lamont and a coffee shop in Edmonton.
But when the Great Depression hit, few folks could afford to buy his coffee and so he went broke, too. Sam was on relief for four years, living on just $3.75 a week.
A chance to mind a popcorn stand got him thinking about opportunity and the rest, as they say, is history. Sam went back to Mannville and either built or had built a popcorn wagon.
It wasn't long before Sam was a fixture there on the street, rain or shine, all year round - even on days so cold that he could barely fire the kettle. Preston's story quotes Sam talking about his best customers, including visitors from Stateside.
"They eat popcorn like cows eat hay. They like it - buy a quarter (worth of) popcorn at a time."
But Sam never got wealthy selling popcorn. Those who knew him say he made enough to live comfortably. When Preston interviewed Sam, he was selling about $11 worth of popcorn a day and making just enough to cover his costs. "What else is there to do with time?" Preston quoted him as saying.
While Sam was hawking popcorn, Pete Jamieson was barking bargains. For more than 50 years, he strode the streets of downtown, hollering out all manner of vital (and not so vital!) information. The weather forecast, sports scores, the latest specials and whatever else tickled his fancy, was broadcast via his loud voice and sometimes through a megaphone plastered with Edmonton Eskimos stickers.
Proudly erect, shoulders back, head up, eyes looking straight ahead as he strode briskly and purposefully. "The weather is continuing clear," he would bellow. "Big sale at Kresge's. Eskimos play tonight. Present time is 12:08. Winds are from the northwest and the high today is forecast to be . . . "
Always adorned with a flamboyant hat and sometimes wearing a sandwich board and sneakers and outfits ranging from the outrageous to the traditional, Pete Jamieson became a fixture in downtown Edmonton. He came to be known as Sandwich Board Pete, Pitchman Pete and Edmonton's unofficial town crier.
My father tells a great story about the first time my mother encountered Pete, the day they arrived in Edmonton from Winnipeg in 1956. "She just stood there, mouth fallen open and swivelled her head as he strode by and then watched him go, hollering away, all the way down the block. She'd never seen anything like that growing up in Saskatchewan and was utterly dumbfounded. 'Did you see that?' she asked, shaking her head. 'Did you see that?' We had all fallen over laughing."
Pete's life as Edmonton pitchman began in 1935 when, as Pete told it, he was given his start by Nelson Eddy. "I was working as an usher at the Dreamland Theatre and the manager was despairing because of the empty seats," Pete was quoted as telling an Edmonton Journal reporter in 1978. "He asked me to walk up and down Jasper Avenue to drum up some business. I jumped at the chance."
The manager was pleasantly surprised when "Naughty Marietta" starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald began playing to full houses. Soon, Pete was wearing sandwich boards and barking advertisements for other ventures, too.
Pete was indeed one of a kind. Born in Dundee, Scotland, May 4 th , 1908, Pete emigrated to Alberta when he was just five and lived with his mother and stepfather on a farm near Innisfree. He worked in saw mills, coal mines and bowling alleys and then found his niche as an usher at Stettler's Old Fox Theatre.
For years he would rise well before dawn, sweep the streets, drop by the police station and the courthouse and then begin his morning advertising rounds, which would take him along Jasper Avenue from 97 th to 109 th Streets. "I don't know how far I've walked," he was fond of telling reporters. "My feet won't tell me."
His voice, which Pete said would get clearer the louder he yelled, would ring out of the heads of shoppers with, as one writer put it, "the volume of discharged rifle bullets." He kept it lubricated with vast quantities of draught beer, which he would down every afternoon at one of a dozen local watering holes.
By the 1950s, Pete charged $1.50 an hour for advertising, which he would supplement with all manner of locally relevant information. Between 1958 and 1962, he was on CJCA Radio with Jimmy Hand in a Town Crier radio feature announcing coming events.
Hand died of a brain tumour in 1962 (while still a young man) and the show died with him. But Pete kept on doing the occasional guest spot on CJCA's morning show.
As Pete reached his golden years, he grew a beard and, as he aged, it turned whiter and whiter. He never had much money and lived off his modest advertising income, taking a room in a downtown rooming house. "That's the thing about this job," he said. "I wake up broke and stay broke all day."
Pete never changed his patter, but the city grew and changed around him. In 1980, the National Film Board released Never a Dull Moment, a short film about Pete's life directed by Peter Campbell and produced by Anne Wheeler. Its star, 72 years old at the time, was paid an honorarium and a new suit.
As John Dodd wrote in a 1980 Journal review of the film, it "captured the poignancy of a court jester in a community that thinks foolishness is dreadfully unproductive. Faces turn away when Jamieson walks by. People who get their news on cablevision have little use for a town crier."
In his late 70s, Pete fell and broke his hip. He was confined to wheelchair after that and lived in the Angus McGugan Nursing Home.
Sam Cherniak and Peter Yule Jamieson were as much a part of downtown Edmonton in its heyday as Mike's News, the Alberta Hotel, the sidewalk photographers, Johnson's Restaurant, the Palace of Sweets and the clock on the Selkirk Hotel. He outlived them all and died March 2 nd , 1991, at the age of 82 years. He left behind two brothers but no other family. With his passing went a part of Edmonton history that we won't see coming down our streets ever again.
Sam the Popcorn Man passed away in 1983, just as street vendors were fighting for the right to sell their wares and increases in the license costs for hawkers and peddlers. For a time, the city administration and council was openly antagonistic to street vendors, citing health concerns about their operations. Fortunately, some wisdom and common sense prevailed and we're gradually seeing an increase in the type of business that Sam Cherniak turned into a career.
For years, I wondered whatever happened to Sam's venerable popcorn wagon. Then I stumbled upon at it the city artifact centre. The bicycle tires are flat, the parts are rusty and the paint worn, but the ingenuity of the contraption is still evident. I can almost see Sam standing there in front of it.
I breathe deeply and the aroma from so many years ago fills my nostrils again. That's magic.