Longtime jewelry store still ticking in downtown Barrie after more than 60 years (5 photos)

Badminton and an automatic watch-winding machine led to one of the longest-running businesses in downtown Barrie.

Bill Le Boeuf Jewellers, now into its 63rd year on Dunlop Street West, has been part of the city's downtown all those years and current owner Adam Le Boeuf, whose father Bill died in 2014, is carrying on the family tradition.

“In 1958, my dad took over from a guy named Herb Sparham, who built the jewelry store here and was the original tenant of this building in the early '40s,” Adam tells BarrieToday during a break in the appointment-only days of COVID. “So there has always been a jewelry store at 52 Dunlop St. W. since this building has been around.”

Before that, it was a wooden structure — no surprise there for downtown Barrie — housing a taxi company.

Travelling through Barrie on a badminton tournament would lead the elder Le Boeuf to a life-long and successful retail career.

By that time, he had earned his watch-making papers — after apprenticing at a North Bay jewelry store — and could clean and repair any mechanical watch of the period. He’d also developed an automatic watch-winding machine and carried the prototype with him wherever he travelled.

OK, so who needs one of those? But if you’re a retailer with dozens of watches, you might.

“He’d approach jewellers in small towns and try to get some orders ready for his patented automatic watch-winding machine,” Adam says.

At one such shop, Bill walked in to peddle his invention and left after buying the place.

He visited Sparham’s store where the owner said he was close to retirement and wasn’t interested in the nifty device, but asked Le Boeuf if he wanted to buy the shop.

More than 60 years later, Bill Le Boeuf Jewellers is still going strong. In the mid-1970s, Le Boeuf bought the entire building and expanded the shop to include the whole main floor.

“My dad knew nothing about running a business. He didn’t have a lot of money, but he had some skills and that was about it,” Adam says. “He financed it through the existing inventory and got some good terms from manufacturers — who we still have ties to — and they gave him some credit and he was able to slowly populate the store with inventory and 62 years later, here we are.”

And that’s where he plans to stay.

“We’re proud to say we haven’t left our (downtown) community,” Adam says. “We haven’t changed. We haven’t abandoned downtown for the south end. We’ve had the same phone number for 62 years.”

He acknowledges the social challenges downtown.

“That’s nothing new,” Adam says. “We’ve got new ones now that are maybe bigger and badder than ever, but we’re not abandoning downtown. We’re part of the community. We owe it to them.”

There have been many multi-generational customers walking through the door, he adds.

“I’ve been here since I was 14, so that’s 34 years, so I’m dealing with some of the grandkids (of people) I sold stuff to initially,” Adam says. “I’ve repaired rings for people who bought it here in the late '50s and they’d say, ‘I bought this from your dad’."