BY MARVIN YOUDEN
SPECAL TO THE GEORGIAN
When, as a small boy, Bill Abbott first entered the Abbott and Haliburton store at The Gravels in Port au Port West, the number of family members employed there struck him as impressive.
“I remember the older Abbott ladies especially,” he said in an interview reflecting on the establishment’s 125th anniversary. “There were so many aunts, uncles and cousins working there.”
Now as general manager, he sees this as one of the main reasons for the company’s longevity.
“It was always a family business,” he said. “And I guess nobody is going to run a business the way you run your own.”
Mr. Abbott started working at the store in his early teens. He remembers one thing about those days – hard labour, and lots of it. “I was 13 or 14 when I started working for the summer months,” he said. “We didn’t own a forklift, and I recall tractor trailer loads of cement just showing up and we would offload them by hand. It was certainly labour intensive.”
He continued to work in the summertime while attending school and then stayed on for a few months after finishing school, before joining the military and moving away from home. The birth of his first child and his father Harold’s desire to retire from full-time management brought him back 12 years.
“The military life is not one we wanted for our child, he explained. “Picking up and moving every three or four years is no way to raise a child in my estimation. Plus my Dad implied that before too long he would be ready to back away from it. And if I wanted to get a good grasp on the business before he went, I should head home.”
So he returned to Port au Port with his wife, Christa (who is from Nova Scotia) and both became involved in the family operation – she joining a few months after he did.
Now he has become part of a management heritage that began in 1885 with his great-great-grandfather, Michael (known as MF) Abbott. MF was a tinsmith who provided tins for canning to lobster fishermen and fish producers in the 1800s. He later moved the business into general merchandise.
“Eventually the store had a bit of everything,” says Mr. Abbott.
In 1907, Harry Haliburton, a merchant for Bairds who operated at The Gravels, joined MF Abbott to establish Abbott and Haliburton Co. Ltd.
“He [Harry Haliburton] was buying lobster and arranging for it to be canned and, in fact, he was buying the cans from MF,” explained Mr. Abbott. So they joined forces. The partnership lasted until 1927 when Mr. Halburton sold out to MF and returned to his Nova Scotia home.
Brothers William and Michael, known popularly as Mr. Bill and Mr. Mike became the second generation of Abbotts to take up the management role. They were instrumental in moving the store to its current location from the other side of The Gravels and moving the business into groceries and hardware.
When Mr. Abbott began working at the store as a teenager, Colonel A. J. Abbott, who represented the third generation of Abbotts, was operating the business. Harold Abbott, who worked at the business in his teen years but followed a different career path much as his son would do later, took over in the 1980s, returning to become the fourth generation of family managers.
Throughout those years, Abbott and Haliburton has changed its operations at The Gravels as required to cater to the needs of consumers – another reason Bill gives for its longevity as a business. From the early tinsmith days of its founder, the family has supplied the needs of local fishermen, operated logging camps, and stocked groceries, hardware, housewares, giftware, building supplies and patio furniture.
Today the company is primarily a building supplies centre with a highly successful giftware business as a secondary operation on the upper level, an area that underwent a major renovation during the fall and winter of 2004-2005 and is managed by Christa Abbott.
A third big reason for the company’s longevity, according to its current manager, is its location on The Gravels, the isthmus joining the mainland of Port au Port to the Port au Port Peninsula. The business has operated from a number of buildings along that beach since 1885.
“We have been all over The Gravels,” says Mr. Abbott. One of the original 1800s buildings, that housed the tinsmith shop and storage, is still in use. It was dragged across the beach and now provides warehouse space. The last of the structures on the other side were damaged by the tidal wave in 1951.
“But our location is definitely a plus for us. Everybody has to pass here to go anywhere,” he said.
Abbott and Haliburton Co. Ltd. provides employment for 18-24 local people at its two locations – Port au Port West and Three Rock Cove.
