Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 23/02) - The intuition of the original owner of Sutherland's Drugs proved to be one of many saving graces for the business.

Wallace Finlayson, who now owns the store, says Angus Sutherland wasn't keen on the idea of putting a drug store in New Town, but he figured it should be located close to where the post office was being built.

Wallace Finlayson visited with mom, Wilma, in her apartment located above the drug store. Wilma came to Yellowknife with her husband her Doug in 1951. Wallace was born in Yellowknife the same year.- Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo

"Old Angus Sutherland was very shrewd," says Finlayson.

"He decided to wait until a lot was chosen for the post office, and then he bought the lot next to it."

The store has always been called Sutherland's Drugs, but Sutherland himself never managed any of the Yellowknife locations.

He stayed in Fort McMurray, Alta., to run Sutherland's Pharmacy. His partner, Walter Hill, set out up the Slave River to establish his partner's namesake northward.

From an undated audio recording obtained from the store, Hill recounts what awaited him when he arrived in the late spring of 1938.

"We had a place staked out on the (Latham) island that we had somebody do for us," Hill recalls. "But I decided that it wasn't a suitable place to have a drug store."

"So, knowing Vic Ingraham, who was living there at the time, and he had a very nice shack that the Cinnamon boys (Glenn and Ted) had built for him the fall before. I made a deal with Vic, and we bought that log cabin."

A few weeks later, Hill received his first order of pharmaceutical supplies from Sutherland, and he opened the log cabin store in Old Town the following day.

After another two weeks, and blasting out rock to make more room on the already crowded piece of Old Town real estate, a wood-frame building was erected next to the cabin where Hill moved the store.

Competition upset

During the early years, the drug store's survival was as tenuous as the mountain aven that sprouted out of the rock next to it.

According to Hill's account, John Michael, whose Yellowknife Supplies store was already firmly established in Old Town, was not happy there was competition.

"(He) was quite perturbed that we were coming into Yellowknife," says Hill.

"After we were running he put up a building that housed a drug store and the Canadian Bank of Commerce."

There were other challenges to be conquered. With the eyes of the nation squarely fixed on the Second World War brewing in Europe, interest in Yellowknife's booming gold industry began to dwindle.

Less interest meant fewer customers.

"Things got very, very quiet as the war progressed," Hill recalls. "Vic Ingraham put up a new hotel. We decided it would be better to move in up there, and use the frame and the log building as the warehouse."

"We put the drug store in the new hotel. That's where all the traffic seemed to be."

But after only a year at Ingraham's hotel, Hill and Sutherland decided business was not improving. They moved the store yet again.

In 1943, Hill and another employee, Keith Miller, packed up everything, including the store's sign, and barged their way down to Fort Smith.

Sutherland's nephew, Dean, moved to Yellowknife from Fort McMurray to take over the store.

As the Second World War drew to a close in 1945, merchants and prospectors began to make their way back to Yellowknife.

Hill and Miller decided to give Yellowknife another try.

"We moved back into the frame store and re-established ourselves over there," Hill recalls. "Dean sent for his wife (Louisa), and they lived upstairs."

"I slept in the warehouse while I was in Yellowknife. We ran it that way for a year or so."

In the summer of 1946, the store was moved yet again. They built a new building on a piece of rock adjacent to the Ingraham Hotel.

Moving up to 'New Town'

Sometime during the late 1940s, the old frame building was moved to New Town.

Heating and plumbing were installed. Dean and his wife, along with pharmacist Anna Blackberg, moved into the store. Hill's son, Billy, moved to Yellowknife to tend the shop in Old Town.

Hill, upon returning to Fort McMurray in 1951, barely had time to say hello to his long-time business partner when tragedy struck.

"By George, a couple days after we got in there, poor Angus dropped dead at his home," says Hill.

Hill stayed in Fort McMurray to manage the store the rest of his days. Shortly after Sutherland's death, Hill asked employee Doug Finlayson if he and his and family were interested in moving to Yellowknife to manage the two stores.

"We ran them both for maybe eight years, and then there was a fire, so we decided to close down the Old Town store, and just keep the one in New Town," says Wallace, who was born in Yellowknife the year his parents, Doug and Wilma, and sister Susan arrived.

"By then, the majority of the population was in New Town."

Doug Finlayson built the present store in 1956.

Although he now owned the business, Finlayson decided to keep the name.

"Angus Sutherland started it, and it was a good name, so we saw no reason to change it," says Wallace.

Within a few years, Finlayson and family had become well established in Yellowknife. He was elected to town council, and became president of the Chamber of Commerce.

The store itself, which was conveniently situated next to the post office, had panned out just as Sutherland predicted. No longer just another ramshackle stoop with a sign in the window, the new, modern building offered all the amenities one could find in a city shop down south.

"We use to sell things like fishing tackle, records," Wallace remembers.

"We never had a malt shop, but we did have a nut machine where people could buy fresh, warm nuts.

"It was very much a mini-department store. We could even put some souvenir clothes on you if you wanted."

It was also the beginning of Sutherland's reputation as one of the best providers in town for reading material.

"We use to do a lot of bush orders, and to a certain extant, we still do," says Wallace.

"So the workers in the camps would order lots of magazines to keep themselves informed."

But as the town of Yellowknife continued to grow, so did the number of businesses. Yellowknife was also developing in areas away from the downtown core.

"Our business has suffered from home deliveries, vehicle traffic," says Wallace.

"They (Sutherland and Hill) didn't pan on everybody owning a car, and living out to what use to be the bush.

"So we've depended on customer service, number one, quality, and changing the product line to meet changing times, and never trying to get too big and expand too much."

Faced with a growing number of specialty shops and retail businesses coming to Yellowknife, Sutherland's went back to the traditional pharmacy.

Friendship and family

Wallace was travelling the world in 1975 when he received word that his father had died. He came back to Yellowknife and became a junior partner in the store.

Roy Giles, who came to work at the store as a pharmacist in 1962, and bought into it in 1967, ran the store with Wallace until he retired in 1989.

In his younger years, Wallace was a bit of a free spirit, but says coming back home after travelling for several years was not as difficult one might expect.

"Once I became a part of Sutherland's Drugs again, I really enjoyed my work," says Wallace. "Yellowknife is a great place to live.

While family has always been a major component of the store's success, Wallace feels friendship bonds have been no less important in ensuring the store's survival.

"If you look through our history, it's gone through not necessarily families, even though that's part of it, but partnerships, which gradually evolved," says Wallace.

"To a certain extent, it represents a connection to the history of Yellowknife like Weaver's and the England's."