This one is from the weird things I notice about Ontario file.
As a born and bred Winnipegger, my earliest visits to my grandparents’ place near London, Ont. were always marked by certain things the locals said or did, that seemed a bit, well, odd.
One of those things was that anytime someone needed to go to the convenience store, they would talk about “Mac’s Milk.” How strange, I thought. Although Seven Eleven (“Sev”) is king in Winnipeg, and presumbaly much of the west, we certainly had Mac’s stores too. The orange and red colour scheme was kind of an eye-sore, and their Froster a poorer cousin to the Slurpee, but that aside it was a pretty standard presence in my hometown. But what was up with the “milk” addition? First, sure, the store sold milk, but it wasn’t a milk specialty store or anything. Secondly, no one in Manitoba — that I had heard — called it “Mac’s Milk.”
Flash forward to 2009. Things have changed. Mac’s is now owned by Quebec’s Couche-Tard, and the kooky Scottish cat has been usurped (murdered?) by a suspiciously gallic winking owl. But nonetheless, since I moved out to Toronto over a year ago, I have occasionally heard the old “Mac’s Milk” reference, and it got me to wondering.
An early Mac's Milk outlet, with that crazy tam-wearing cat
So yesterday I googled. Turns out the Ontarians aren’t so nutty after all (at least on this count). The store was in fact called Mac’s Milk for the first 13 or so years of its existence. The original logo — seen here — even had the cat carrying a jug of milk.
It could seem puzzling why into late 1980s, and even today, people use a name that was officially changed in 1975. Certainly there’s a nostalgia factor. Though I’m not so sure about people around my age who were not even born when it was called Mac’s Milk.
On the other hand, who am I to speak, when I refuse to acknowledge the Rogers Centre. It’s the SkyDome people. Now, and forever.
