Kuss Drugstore

Growing up in Cloverdale the only drugstore was Kuss's. They filled prescriptions, sold pharmacy goods, candies, magazines, books, and gifts. This was the place to go if you needed to buy a birthday card and a present, especially at the last minute.

Kuss's Drugstore was on the main street of Cloverdale, on 176th Street, between Highway 10 and 57th Avenue. There is a beauty shop now in that location.

The Kuss family lived in Cloverdale and their daughter Liz was a year ahead of me in school. They knew everyone in town because everyone walked through their doors at some point to buy something they needed.

I remember they had a collection of bad cheques they used to tape up on their window, offering to let the writer buy it back. I guess this public embarrassment of having your name displayed as writing an NSF cheque would motivate people to pay up their debt. Nowadays with the Privacy Act that wouldn't fly.

Our recent hot weather has reminded me of a hot summer around 1970. Back then there was no air conditioning and Kuss had put all their chocolates on sale at half price because they were melting. My father was in the drugstore to buy something and noticed the sale and bought a box. Out of every kind of chocolate you'd think he could have bought something good. But no. He bought a box of chocolate gingers. Ewww yuck! And he enjoyed them all to himself. Good strategy now that I think of it.

Shopper's Drug Mart showed up in Cloverdale around 1973. Around that time Kuss's store name changed to the Pharmasave. I can't remember when he sold it, but late 1980's is my guess. The owner Henry kept it at the 176th Street location for several years and then moved it to the current location on 176A Street and 57th Avenue.

Cloverdale Post Office

Cloverdale's post office used to be located in a large building located on the southwest corner of 176A Street and 57th Avenue. This was a full service centre where mail was processed, stamps sold, and mailboxes for Cloverdale residents were located inside. Door to door mail service didn't come to Cloverdale until the late sixties. I still remember our old mailing address:

Box 165, Cloverdale, BC.

Back in those days mail was sorted through each post office in the various communities around Surrey. Postal codes didn't come in to our area until the mid-seventies.

The post office stayed in operation until about the early 1980's. When we walked into the building there were several teller wickets - usually without a postal clerk - through which we could see a few people in the back sorting mail from various conveyer belts. Eventually one of them would grudgingly approach the wicket to serve the customer. This was not a friendly bunch who worked here. They probably all lived in Whalley!

After the post office closed down in favor of running a sub-postal outlet from the Shopper's Drug Mart, they still kept boxes open inside the building for another year or so. This must have been a similar scenario across the province of BC. Around the mid-eighties all those post office box stores started opening up around town.

The old post office still has two mailboxes out front but the building has remained empty for the better part of the past 25 years with a big "For Lease" sign out front. The building has had the odd occupant on a temporary basis over the years but I've always been used to seeing it empty with the realtor's sign out front. Today I drove past and glanced at it and through a window on the north side I noticed a woman in an office working on her computer. But there is no sign on that side of the building identifying who or what lurks within, so I figured this calls for a little more investigation and went around the front.

The old post office is now home to the regional Pharmasave Head Office.