Jack Garner’s recent passing reminds me of my first years in Barrie during the late 1980s.
I don’t so much remember Jack as the guy who had a huge hand in building our waterfront, or the public school trustee who took on the teachers’ union or even the guy who staunchly defended the downtown through thick and thin — although he did all of those things during his time.
Instead, I remember Jack as the guy you could always talk to in Garner Sports, which used to be on Dunlop Street West and was surely one of the very best sports stores I’ve ever been in. And I’ve been in a few.
By then, Jack’s son John was running Garner Sports, but Jack was always around.
It was the evolution of how retail used to work, before big boxes and chain stores sullied the business.
Jack’s father, William, launched Garner Menswear in downtown Barrie in 1931. It became Garner Menswear and Sports, and then Garner Sports, continuing through two more generations, to Jack and John, who passed in 2017.
And I loved shopping in Garner Sports on so many levels.
Being a practical fellow, I like fair prices for excellent sports gear and that pretty much defined Garner Sports.
John could string your tennis racket, find you the right type of running shoes (depending on how far you could run), or pick you out the right goalie mask so you didn’t get your head blown off by a wayward slapshot in your pick-up game. He’d ask your level of competition before helping you pick out the right sports gear.
He knew his equipment cold and never tried to sell you anything you didn’t need or couldn’t afford. If there was ever a problem, John Garner would replace it or give you your money back, whatever you wanted.
I never had a problem with anything I bought there, from goalie pads or body armour to skates, but I knew Garner Sports stood behind what it sold 100 per cent.
It was a real sports store. Sure, it had hockey sweaters and other jerseys, but Garner’s was about equipment. There were dozens of baseball gloves on the wall in summer, tons of skates on display in the winter. More hockey sticks than you could, well, shake a stick at. Goalie pads had their own room, and you could even buy a regulation hockey net there.
I can remember visiting one August and asking John why it was so busy with kids and their parents. They were buying their hockey gear for the upcoming season, I was told. In August.
And Jack was usually there when I went to Garner Sports. He always had a little joke about this or that, usually politics.
Jack was a conservative — big or little ‘c’, likely the former — and he knew I was a newspaper reporter. So he pitched the odd story idea and I always listened, because I knew Jack knew what he was talking about.
With Jack, everybody also had a ‘y’ attached to their first name. I was Bobby, his son was Johnny. Sports store, sports lingo. John picked up the lingo, too. Just the way it was when we were kids.
Jack knew the sports equipment business, too, but he let John — who appeared to have little interest in politics — handle the business.
An example of how John did that was illustrated one Friday night when I went into Garner Sports looking for new goalie skates. John wasn’t working, only a guy in his late teens. I was understandably reluctant to buy Bauer Supremes from a kid who likely knew much less about them than I did. Boy, was I wrong.
This guy had been trained, likely by John, and knew skates, cold.
I bought new skates half a size smaller than normal and they fit like a glove. Still do, I still play in them and that must have been 15 years ago, maybe more. Quality lasts, as I always say.
But Garner Sports is gone now, as are Jack and John, and Barrie is the poorer for it.
Personality goes a long way in the retail game, I’ve always thought, and I miss the trips down Dunlop Street West and the friendships I made at Garner Sports all those years ago.
Bob Bruton is a goaltender who also covers city council for BarrieToday.
