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Thompson Co-op Store

2nd and 3rd Generation page

The Thompson Co-op Store: My mom, Della Jesmer, was the face of the Thompson Co-op store. She was the manager of the Co-op from 1971 to about 1985?? She only agreed to manage it for a short time but kept doing it. It was a buyer’s club. People would have a card where they paid a monthly amount, and they also paid every time they shopped. There was a catalogue area in the back. There was great savings to be had. People had to put up with a lot of inconveniences, like crowded aisles and boxes all over the place. Many may remember the bulk cheese for sale; the 5-gallon buckets of corned beef; the bagged milk from Modern Dairies; the bulk bologna; the 40 lb bags of flour and sugar; the walk-in coolers; the buckets of ice cream and many other food items. My sister and I worked there for years. I started out by just pricing the dry goods. I was paid with candy. My friends and I enjoyed unloading semi-truck trailers. We got $25 a truck. Later on, my sister and I were on the cash register. Mostly we stocked shelves. We were resentful at times because the last thing we wanted to do was work four or six hours at the store. But we were paid well. I had about $80 a week to spend in high school. One year the United Food and Commercial Workers Union was even brought into the Co-op. Many of the workers were from Newfoundland. The Co-op started out in the basement of a house. Then it moved into the trailer court with a double wide on Ospawagan. Later on, they bought the Pink Panther Night Club on Nelson Road. For a while the Co-op shared the building with a Credit Union Bank. There they stayed for a few years. The gas bar was added to the back and was run as a separate entity. Later on, after my mom retired, the Co-op moved into the building where Thompson Pizza used to be. It lasted a short time and it folded. This is a short excerpt written by John Barker about the Co-op. Nowadays, it is a Christian Book Store. As of 1-7-22, Della Jesmer is still with us and living in Winnipeg.

A newspaper article about the Co-op store in 1988. In 1988 the Co-op held a raffle for a patio table. Ralph Newstead won the table. He is pictured with my mother Della. The Co-op was looking for new members. The store was in a slow decline at this time. Within a couple years there would be no Co-op store anymore. People were going elsewhere to buy their groceries. The Co-op Gas bar continued on and the last stand of the Co-op was where Thompson Pizza used to be, at the corner of Station Rd and Nelson Rd.

The Thompson Co-op was formed in August 1969, according to an article in The Thompson Times on Oct. 6, 1971, a short-lived newspaper, which competed with the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News. The Times article was posted in Pioneers of Thompson Manitoba 1950’s and 1960’s, a closed Facebook group, administered by Betty Snuggs, which is a superb ongoing source of local history found at  https://www.facebook.com/groups/PioneersofThompson/ last Dec. 18 by  Kevin Jesmer, of DeKalb, Illinois, whose mother, Della Jesmer, managed the co-op back then. The Jesmer family lived at 56 Hemlock Cres.  Della was originally from Dauphin, and her husband, Ted, who moved to Thompson in 1960, was from Wadena, Saskatchewan, and worked in the mill at Inco.

Originally, the Thompson Co-op Store operated out of a basement until May 1970 when it moved into a double trailer in the Burntwood Trailer Court. The president was Wilf Hudson. Membership originally cost $100 – for 10 shares at $10 per share. Its next home, with a grocery store operation, was at 32 Nelson Rd., where Light of the North Covenant Church is now. Aside from changing tenants, renaming it, and some fresh coats of paint over the years, the exterior of the 2,400-foot building looks remarkably similar today to how it looked 40 years ago when the Thompson Co-op Store was housed there, along with Thompson Credit Union.

The store became a church




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