Tributes
Nesbitt Roots 150 Years Long
The Low Down to Hull and Back News, November 13, 1986
Keith Nesbitt's family goes back a long, long way. Matter of fact, just about 150 years, give or take a bit! Keith's great-great grandfather immigrated from Ireland sometime in the late 1830s and settled on a land grant of 1,000 acres in the Rupert area. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the homestead in 1960, and all the old family records were lost, making it impossible to have exact dates.
The farm was handed down through the generations, with the present Keith being the fourth generation to own the land. He actively farmed until 1970, then moved to Wakefield when he bought the general store from Charlie Chamberlin. At one time, Keith was active in the Farrellton Co-op, and served for 16 years as the secretary-treasurer of the North Masham Municipality, which was absorbed into the Municipality of La Peche with regroupment in 1975.
Shortly after he left high school Keith did a stint as a bookkeeper with a flour company in Ottawa. But, as he put it, "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy," so Keith came back to the farm, although he had a hankering for a business of his own and made some moves to buy a place in Rupert. Instead, he purchased the Chamberlin store in Wakefield in 1970.
The Wakefield General Store (WGS) is truly a family business, with Keith's wife, Kay, daughters Mona, Keitha and Jenifer, and son John, all active at one time or another in the operation of the store. Keith is pretty proud of his family. Two of the girls are university graduates, while Jenifer and John are at Carleton.
Keith pointed out that his store and Hamilton Motors are the oldest businesses in the village under the same management for a sustained length of time: Hamilton Motors for over fifty years, and the Wakefield General Store for seventeen.
The store is pretty much the kind of place you might read about in novels, featuring small town life at the turn of the century. The only thing missing is the pot-bellied stove and the biscuit barrel! You can buy virtually anything you need, from soup-to-nuts, literally. But then again, Keith didn't make too many changes in the place when he took it over in 1970. For example, there was no drug store in Wakefield in those days, so a goodly supply of patent medicines was on hand. Hardware and dry goods were also much more in evidence than today. But, there is still a wide variety of shirts, socks, rubber boots and stuff for tourists, fishermen and hunters, who can pick up their sporting license and augment their gear in one stop. "Wakefield crested shirts have probably gone around the world," Keith remarked. The one-stop aspect is perhaps the appeal of a general store and, of course, you'll always get personal service, too.
Keith said that when he first took over the store, he really had no experience in the grocery business, but he did have an eye for good beef. He tells it this way. "In the last few years we ran the farm, we finished Western beef on the feedlot. They were sold on a rail grade basis, that is, hanging on a meathook rail, not on the hoof. I used to follow the cattle to the abattoir and see them on the rail. I got a pretty good idea what good beef should look like."
Keith carried this one step further when he learned how to butcher, but added his own touch to the trade. For example, his chops are real value for the money. They are inches thick, compared to the supermarket variety. And, as a personal note, it should be added that Keith’s steaks are without doubt the best that I've ever eaten, bar none!
While on the subject of meat, Keith mentioned that he has a number of customers from the city who buy all their meat from the WGS, which incidentally is all Alberta beef. “Many of them have a standing order for steaks, roasts and chops that they just call up and repeat year after year,” he said.
But, getting back to the early days of the store. Keith said that the first major change he made in the store was to buy a new cash register. “Charlie Chamberlin came into the store one day and noticed the new cash register. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the old one; it had served two generations and was over fifty years old!”
Reg Clarke and Orville Brown, long-time employees of Charlie Chamberlin, stayed on to help break in Keith and give him a chance to become familiar with the business.
Soon after Keith got the feel of the business, he phased out the substantial number of charge accounts that the store carried. “I suspected that it was just a habit of people to charge their groceries. We may have lost a few customers, but they soon came back,” he said.
In 1978 the Wakefield General Store was the first store in the village to obtain a license to sell beer. The Wakefield Inn had a take-out license and, of course, bitterly opposed Keith’s application. Today, Keith considers it as a convenience to his customers, although he thinks the beer can be had cheaper elsewhere.
Another convenience that Keith extends to his customers is shopping by phone, with the groceries on a weekly delivery by Keith. He has a dozen or so regulars who don’t have cars, or are senior citizens who would find personal shopping difficult. There are very few stores that extend this courtesy anymore.
Another service provided by the Nesbitts is the laundromat which no longer has a sign pointing to its location behind the house next-door to the store. The sign was a Bill 101 victim!
When it comes to the steam train coming or not coming to Wakefield, he is of two minds. From a business point of view he is all for it, but the private Keith Nesbitt would like to keep the village much as it is now. This private view is in keeping with the persona of Keith, who claims that people have told him he is a bit of a grump. But he feels that this is in keeping with the nature of the business. “Some people are just harder to get along with than others, and I don’t believe in having an artificial smile glued on my face all the time,” he said.
To be sure, Keith Nesbitt is his own man, and very likely his family business will continue for many years to come. A dynasty once started is bound to carry on.