#STEPHEN LICENCE MONTANA ARTIST WINDOWS#

I mention the train set and miniature village. “I often serve the children of people I have sold to in the past…I also like to help the architectural students from Loyalist College when they come in for materials to build their scaled mock-ups.” “I was able to offer advice about the couplers on the customer’s HO scale train,” Gerry tells me when he returns to find me sizing up a tandem sleigh. I run my hand over the smooth lacquer finish of the Quebec crafted wooden toboggans and drift away to the winter hills of my childhood. Gerry tends to a customer while I check out the icons of Canadian winter: skates, hockey sticks, snowshoes, toques…mitts. “I enjoy the model trains and hobby section.” “I haven’t kept up with the bikes as much but I like to ride them,” he tells me. “I like to stand back and not influence too much,” he continues. This month, Gerry celebrates 55 years at the helm of the business. “I tell people the only award I got in life was for attendance… not missing school or work,” Gerry Bongard shares. On any given Saturday and often through the week, you’ll likely find three generations of Bongards tending shop with the backup of employees. grew the sporting and hobby themes, and while the store has moved its address on Front Street through the decades, it remains as a landmark in the downtown. Under the stewardship of the Bongards, Stephen Licence Ltd. Licence died in 1952 but the store continued under the ownership of a long-time employee until the day Licence’s son-in-law, Gerry Bongard, left his job in the rail shops of Belleville and with his wife Carole, purchased the business. With the slogan, “it is never as rare as riding on air,” the ‘Quinte’ sat well with his clientele. As his business took hold and pneumatic bicycle tires replaced the hard, tubeless variety, Licence began to assemble his own brand of bicycle. In the fall of 1918 he packed his belongings to set up shop on Belleville’s Front Street. Stephen Licence was a bicycle racing enthusiast who grew up in Toronto and saw the potential of the bicycle. The Globe newspaper of Toronto reported that “the bicycle is serving the school boy, the school girl, the office man, the worker and the salesman.”Ī bicycle could be had for as little as $12 and the Canada Cycle and Motor Company, CCM, then manufacturing 85 per cent of the bicycles in the country, expanded into a new plant in Weston, Ontario. It served as vital transportation for factory workers while at the same time thousands of bicycles were shipped overseas as part of the war effort. In Canada, during the First World War, while parts of day-to-day business were halted, the bicycle was deemed essential manufacture.

#STEPHEN LICENCE MONTANA ARTIST WINDOWS#

Some store windows draw on images from eras past while others, like the one before me, carry a story. Some store windows at this time of year can be like theatre, places of make-believe like a circus or a street parade, places that suspend space and time. The scene within the store window has my attention the headlight on a miniature scale train shimmers through a snowdrenched valley and down past a tiny village where skaters on a pond glide free. A hush of traffic carries through night streets my hands take to my coat pockets, sheltering from the north breeze descending from Hastings County. The light from the store window spills warmth onto the sidewalk. Gerry Bongard (left) offers some detail about one of the many and varied products available at Stephen Licence.

Stephen licence montana artist