Joanne McQuarrie, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter | [email protected]
Rick Lagace has enjoyed the friendliness and comfortable atmosphere in Jasper since moving here in 2009 from Hay River, NWT.
It didn't take him long to start getting to know people and he's the store manager at one of the best places in town to do that: TGP, Your Jasper Grocer.
Lagace has a long history in the grocery business.
A couple of years into business administration studies at Laurentian University in Sudbury, ON, he got his first job during his studies as a grocery clerk in Sudbury. Then he got a job as assistant manager in Ajax at Food City.
"I moved all over Ajax, Toronto, London, then back to Sudbury, and back to London, and that's when I said, 'That's it!'," Lagace said.
"That's when I opened Country Style Donuts, in London. I had it for three years."
He started serving breakfast at the shop - it cost 99 cents. That was in 1989.
"We were open 24 hours a day because we did everything from scratch," Lagace said. "I made a lot of money but it was too many hours."
He took a year off from that intense schedule.
"Then I got bored," he said.
He was hired to be an assistant manager at a grocery store, the Northwest Company in Hay River, owned by the Hudson's Bay Company.
"There's lots of friendly people up there,鈥� he said. 鈥淓verybody waves to each other."
Winters aren't as warm as the people though.
"The winters are cold and harsh there. Your furnace runs all the time," Lagace said. "Once you hit 50 degrees below zero, you just dress for it - cold is cold."
But Lagace never wore a pair of winter boots there.
"It's a dry cold," he said. "You don't get the slush in the spring time and you don't use windshield washer fluid."
He also spent a lot of time swatting insects, including sand flies and horseflies that folks call bulldogs.
"They're big - bigger than you think," he recalled.
Lagace said the northern lights up there are "incredible".
"If you whistle at them or shine a flashlight they stop moving for a few minutes," he said. "They're so magical. Every part of the Northwest Territories produces different coloured lights - purple, yellow, blue - a multitude of colours. The farther up north you go, the more the colour change."
In that area, Lagace said, there are a lot of rocks, no hills, and trees are tiny, tiny spindles.
Snowmobiling was a popular past time. To go tobogganing folks went to the Mackenzie River and slid down the banks. Lagace went on a fishing trip on a Bombardier and to a fish fry. He also went on dog sled rides.
Ice roads are part of life in the north, a major route of transportation for big trucks from Hay River to mines in area communities.
"I could hear the ice shift," he said. "The ice could be eight to ten feet thick. It was solid but it cracked."
It took a long time to get groceries.
"We used to order groceries a year in advance," Lagace said. A transport truck took the supplies up to Hay River.
"We'd separate them on skids, palletize it, and they were shrink-wrapped," Lagace said.
Then they were sent to outlying remote communities. When folks got word their supplies were coming, Lagace said they closed the town down and went to pick them up.
If there are days when Jasper feels isolated, remember this: Lagace said by the time grocery orders got to those communities, the pop and chips were outdated.
Lagace lived in Hay River for 11 years.
"Then this job came available in Jasper, and I was hired right away," he said.
Working in Jasper brought him closer to family and friends, and to bigger centres.
"When you come back (from an isolated community) you appreciate the things that people take advantage of," he said, including coffee and snacks at familiar shops.
Lagace is known for his friendly, helpful manner, and that extends beyond TGP.
He'll see young folks and because he knows their parents from the store, will ask, 'How's your mom and dad?'
He is a familiar face at the Alpine Summit Seniors Lodge.
Before the COVID pandemic, "I'd go see seniors (there) at least once a week because they were my customers," he said. "On Mother's Day, I took them all a rose, compliments of the store.
"They have worked all their lives, shopped at the store. It's giving back."
Lagace delivered specific items to residents at the lodge too, from strawberries to newspapers.
To say Lagace works full time at TGP is an understatement.
But ironically, the COVID pandemic has allowed him more time to relax.
"This is the first year I've been able to enjoy the mountains," he said. "You see them differently because you have time. You have time to breathe, just enjoy life.
鈥淭here's time to get out in nature, refresh my mind and enjoy Jasper, the community. It's a very friendly place. I highly recommend it."
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