11/27/2023
This post together with photos was provided by our friends at Victory Meat & Produce Market with thanks.
The original location of Victory Meat Market at 89 York St sat across from Staples Drugs, in the Edgecombe block building (1st photo). Though, sometime in the 1900s, the Edgecombe Block building lost its top two floors, but why and how?
From searching the archives, I discovered Alonzo Staples opened his drug store sometime in the late 1800s (3rd photo) and transferred to his cousin Kenneth around 1918.
Kenneth Staples Drugs thrived at the corner of York and King St (Edgecombe Block), selling more than just pharmacy supplies. Staples Drugs had lunches, fountain drinks, and THE BEST milkshakes, as our own Brian McCarty and Diane Quigg recall. Diane even worked at that Staples Drugs when she was just 17.
(4th photo around 1961)
Staples Drugs in downtown Fredericton was sold in 1970 after Kenneth's death, though his brother Cecil continued his separate chain of Staples Drugs locations in Moncton, NB, with the final one closing this year, 2022.
While under the Kenneth Staple Drugs title in 1936, a fire broke out upstairs, causing extensive damage. Plans were put together in the summer of 1936 for Edgecombe to be converted into a modern shopping centre with the top two floors removed (5th photo). Staples Drugs remained on the corner.
We learned that this was not the first tragedy in the building. Less than two years later, in December 1937, the second floor caught fire, adding up to $50,000 in damages and lost products for the businesses below (last photo).
