Northway Home Hardware in Inverary Changes Hands

Jeff Green | Dec 15, 2021

Reta Azulay was working at a Scotiabank branch in Kingston, and was also raising a young family in Inverary, when one day her husband Roger, who ran a tree service, came home and said he had met with Jack Barr. He’d met with Jack at a building that B

“There was nothing there, no houses. There was a farmer's field across the road, and not much else,” Reta recalled last week, when contacted at what is now the Inverary Home Hardware store.

“He came home from the meeting and asked me if I wanted us to open a hardware store, as if our lives weren't busy enough. But it seemed like an opportunity and we opened on June 11, 1988. We did not have any banner at the time, we were an independent store. The store was about 40 x 40 and we got a first order from a supplier and off we went,” she says of the very beginnings of Northway Hardware.

They had some basic hardware, and some power tools in the store, and people responded well when they first opened because it meant less trips to Kingston for people in Storrington Township.

Then reality set in.

“Five days after we opened, there was a break-in and most of our stock was stolen, “said Reta, “it just about cleaned our shelves out. “

The police eventually found most of the stock in a warehouse in Ottawa, and they got some back, but it set them back to having to re-stock before selling their initial order.

Also, Jack Barr opened his own store on the same property, which was a surprise, but eventually Northway became established.

Roger scaled back his tree business and devoted much of this time to sourcing supplies, sometimes running into Noble Trousdale of Trousdale's in Sydenham, at warehouses in Eastern Ontario and as far away as Toronto.

Reta kept working at the bank, with her mom and dad working at the hardware store, along with a few employees, for the first couple of years. Reta eventually dropped down to part-time at the bank.

It wasn't until the store was better established, in 1996, that she left Scotiabank entirely, and has managed the hardware store on a full time basis, working as much as 7 days a week, for 25 years. 

Roger was the buyer, dealing with the back end of the store, and they made all of the major decisions together.

“Roger is very analytical. He thinks through the problems and eventually comes to a solution. Don't tell him this, but he was the brains of the operation.” she said.

The store has expanded a few times. They brought in new lines of products constantly, and developed the kind of expertise needed to serve a rural population and the growing numbers of urban transplants who required assistance learning about water pumps, pressure tanks, and septic systems. Serving the outdoors market with hunting, fishing and hiking needs has been a priority as well.

When the ice storm hit in 1998, and people were cut off from power for a week or more, Roger did his best to find everything people needed from his contacts in Toronto, and elsewhere.

In 2000, after suffering from numerous break-ins over 12 years, including one case when someone drove their car into the front of the store in order to get in, and other times when Roger slept in the store, ready to catch would-be thieves, they put in a good security system.

“It took us a while to get smart on that one,” said Reta. 

The store also became associated with different store brands over the years, from John's Do it Centre, to Noveco and finally True-Value for five years. In 2010, Northway joined with Home Hardware, which has been a nice fit for the store.

In 2012, they purchased a building and lot on the north-west side of Inverary, a former milk truck depot, in order to expand their building supplies business and opened up a showroom for maple syruping products.

Then, in 2016, when the owners of the local LCBO store had retired, Northway incorporated an LCBO outlet at the south side of the hardware store.

“The community has grown around us. Now there are houses on every side of the store, and businesses are cropping up in Inverary. A lot has happened over that time, and people still appreciate that we have, or can get whatever they need, for them.”

A lot has happened for Reta and Roger in that time as well. They now live on Roger's family farm at Perth Road, where Roger runs cattle, and the constant state of change that comes from running a store has taken a toll on their family as well. A couple of years ago they began to talk to Will Trousdale, from Trousdale's Home Hardware store in Sydenham, about selling the store to him and turning it into a Home Building Centre to serve the large home construction market that has developed in the vicinity of both stores.

“COVID slowed that down. We all had to figure out how to keep open, how to keep supporting our community, and there was no time to think about the deal we had been working on. But a year passed, and we started talking again. What I like about what has happened is that the store has maintained its categories. We are still selling farm supplies, chickens in the spring, fishing and hunting equipment, everything that people need. Will is a technical guy. I never caught on to computerising the store and he has done all that.

In October, Northway Home Hardware  became Inverary Home Hardware. Reta is still working at the store.

“I'm no longer a manager. I take weekends off now, and Will comes in 2 or 3 days a week, but I fill in where needed, and make sure everything is working and customers are being served. It's nice knowing the bills are being taken care of by someone else,” she said.

She is planning to work for another year or more, and is enjoying the less hectic schedule. After 33 years running a store that grew with and for the Inverary community, Reta will make sure that it continues to do so into the future, before retiring completely.