Postcard Memories is a weekly series of historic postcard views and photos submitted by Marcel Rousseau.
Some were previously published by the Orillia Museum of Art and History and in the book Postcard Memories Orillia.
This early 1940s photo of Mississaga Street East shows the RCA mascot, Nipper, sitting in the doorway of the Newton-Croxall Ltd. Furniture Store.
The original Nipper was a mutt from Bristol, England. Born in 1884, he was part Bull Terrier and part Fox Terrier. Francis Barraud, one of Nipper's human friends, painted a picture of the canine listening to a phonograph, ear cocked attentively.
Barraud shopped the painting around and eventually sold it to the Gramophone Company of London. The painting, named 'His Master's Voice,' graced the walls of the Gramophone Company and became their trademark.
Later, Emile Berliner, inventor of the disc gramophone, gained the rights to use it in the United States and Canada and the image became the trademark of the Victor Talking Machine Company and eventually RCA.
At the rear of the Newton-Croxall store was Bryson’s Bread with an entrance off the rear alley. A few years later the furniture store became Anderson Furniture and at the rear, Trent Valley Bakery. It is now the location of Mariposa Market.
Next door at 115 Mississaga St. E. was Horace Page Billiards, later Bob White's Billiards, then the Star Café, later the Shangri-La Gardens at No. 119, Olympia Billiards at No. 121 and Strathman Clothing at No. 127.
