Oscars surplus in Toronto

[BCA]

Oscar’s was a typical surplus store in downtown Toronto. It was about 1980 that the store was sold and he moved to an industrial unit in Downsview: Dufferin and Finch area as I recall, where he dealt in wholesale military surplus soft goods. I often went there to pick through the mounds of soft goods. He was an affable dealer, a survivor of tough times in WW2 Europe. As with many surplus dealers he had a wife who hovered in the background in the later years to make sure he didn’t be too generous in his dealings. I still use a drill press branded with his logo: the beginning the importation of Chinese tools that began to come to Canada in the 1980’s. I don’t recall ever knowing his last name.