The store dates to 1913 and looks it, with a false front that rises three storeys high, like a building out of the Wild West. But the real heritage is inside. The Sirdar General Store has the original wood floor, the original wooden beadboard walls and ceiling, the original wooden shelves, and the original fixtures, from glass display cases to a desk and shelves that constituted Sirdar’s original post office.
The merchandise in the store isn’t original, but is pretty vintage as well. Nailed to a wall are a quintet of dispensers for Zig-Zag, O-K and Vogue cigarette rolling papers that probably date to the 1930s or ’40s. Above the shelves are ancient tins for products like Red Seal Tillicum Toffee, Malkin’s Pure Allum, and Old Glory Plug Tobacco.
There is a lovely wooden display case for White Circle Pocket Editions, a British book line that stopped publishing in Canada in the 1950s. A 1960s display features nifty “Airline Coin Purses” for TWA, Swissair and Air France. The cost in the day was 59 cents, and no one ever updated it.
