Local history book a labour of love
- Details
- Published on Friday, March 23, 2018
Photo courtesy of The History of Neepawa Businesses
The History of Neepawa Businesses, by local historians Rick Sparling, Norma Forsman and Cecil Pittman, contains many photos of historic and current Neepawa businesses, including Lou Parson’s barber shop. This business was located beside the CIBC, where the annex is now.
Kate Jackman - Atkinson
Neepawa Banner & Press
Since its earliest days, commerce has been an important part of Neepawa’s history. As the town’s population has ebbed and flowed, businesses have opened and closed to serve the changing needs of the area’s residents and visitors. This long and diverse history is being chronicled in a new book, The History of Neepawa Businesses by Rick Sparling, Norma Forsman and Cecil Pittman.
The project was spearheaded by Sparling, who grew up in Neepawa and has written two books about the town’s hockey history. “After completing my second hockey book, a couple of people were asking me what I was going to do next and Gail Cathcart and Cam Smith both suggested doing one on Neepawa businesses,” said Sparling about the idea for the new book. He had worked with Forsman, who is also the archivist at the Beautiful Plains Archives, and Pittman, a historian with an extensive personal photo archive of the town, previously and soon found they were indispensable to his new project.
In January 2017, Sparling began working on the project, which he hoped would help fill some time during his retirement. In the intervening months, he has worked on the book every day.
Forsman recalls her excitement upon learning that Sparling was working on a book about Neepawa’s business history. “That’s on my bucket list,” she remembers saying upon hearing about the project. Forsman and her husband Ron have an extensive personal collection of newspaper clippings covering area businesses, which became an important part of the book. “When I met Ron 25 years ago, he was a very community minded person… He would get the weekly paper and clip and save pictures and stories,” said Forsman. She was already interested in family history and when they married, she began sharing her husband’s interest in local business history. Forsman said she always thought it would be neat to do something with their extensive collection, “When Rick asked [if I’d help], I said ‘Sure!’.”
Many sources
The book pulls together many sources, both public and private. It combines previously published histories from Dick McKenzie's 1958 “75 Years Neepawa Land of Plenty”, “Heritage 1883-1983 (100 years)” and “The Beautiful Plains Story 2008 (125 years)”; material from the Beautiful Plains Archives; and the personal archives of the Forsmans and Pittman, who combed the Neepawa Press archives to compile the weekly “Looking Back” feature from 1989 to 2018. Forsman has also been looking through old newspapers to see if there are any businesses that they have missed. “If it wasn’t for Norma and Cecil, it would have taken 20 years,” Sparling said of the help he received from the co-authors.
Sparling has reached out to current and former business owners, and their families, to help fill in holes and create a more complete picture of Neepawa businesses through the ages. “[Rick’s] not afraid to go to people and ask for information. People have been very good to him,” said Forsman.
Forsman said that one of the hardest parts has been to match the locations of early Neepawa businesses to present buildings. For example, the current Harris Pharmacy location was once three different stores and the CIBC annex was also an active location for early Neepawa businesses.
For Sparling, the biggest surprise was the number of implement dealers and the changes that took place. He explained that he often just thought about the downtown area when thinking of Neepawa businesses, but the implement dealers, located along the highways, hold millions of dollars of inventory.
As they reach the home stretch, Sparling said, “The process has been more than rewarding… I’ve learned a lot about the town.” While this book represents a depart in subject matter from his previous books, the research process is the same. “I love doing that,” he said of digging through the town’s history and contacting people to find the missing pieces.
Initially, Sparling said he thought compiling the material would be an easy job, but 13 months later, the question has become when to stop. As they find more information, the project has grown. “I thought that would be an easy job and I suppose after 13 months (and growing), I discovered this was a real monster,” said Sparling. Despite what seems like never-ending material, he said they are capping the book at 575 pages. Sparling said that any larger and the print quality declines, while the price increases.
The authors have volunteered their time and all proceeds from the sale of the book will support the Beautiful Plains Archives, which also received a $2,500 heritage grant for the book project. They are aiming for an official launch in June and while the books will be available through McNally Robinson, any books purchased through Sparling will maximize the amount of money the Archives receives. The book is expected to be priced at $34.99 and as the launch approaches, Sparling said they will have pre-order forms around town to get an idea of how many copies he should bring out.
