Download The Keith Beedie Story - Beedie Group

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THE KEITH
BEEDIE STORY
Keith’s cherished roller skates
were bought for $15.
PART 1: LAYING THE FOUNDATION
CHAPTER 1: A BEEDIE IS BORN
the newspaper offi ce to report the accident and ask for replacements.
“Th ey were mad,” says Keith. “And I wasn’t off the hook. Th ey dropped
off the extras, which I had to pay for, and I had to fi nish my route. Th at
was rough.”
Working a couple of jobs meant that Keith usually had a bit of money
in his pocket. He spent his cash on supplies for his model airplanes,
but he also enjoyed socializing. “In those days, you and a girlfriend
could take the streetcar downtown,
watch a movie and share a grilled cheese
He loved everything
about the skating scene:
the smooth, fast surface,
the crowds and all the
pretty girls.
and a Coke, all for a dollar,” says Keith.
Another favourite pastime was roller
skating. “I learned how to skate on the
road in front of the house. Me and some
other guys, we’d strap on our skates and
play hockey with a tennis ball. It was
pretty rough and we were always avoiding
cars but we got pretty good at it. Th en
somebody told me to go try the Roller
Bowl on Hornby Street downtown. Boy,
it was so nice and smooth compared to
the road.” Keith couldn’t use his outdoor
wheels inside the Roller Bowl, and aft er
renting a few times, he decided he liked
skating enough to buy an indoor pair of
his own for $15. Th ose skates still sit in
Keith’s house today, worn out but in one
piece. He soon discovered that he loved
everything about the skating scene: the
smooth, fast surface, the crowds and all
the pretty girls. He was good enough
that he sometimes got into the Roller
Bowl for free in exchange for acting
as a “skate cop.” It was his job to make
sure that no one skated too fast and that
there was no mischief on the rink.
To earn extra money for Christmas in
1941, Keith took on some casual work
at Woodward’s Toyland. It was the pre-
Christmas rush and the department
store hired people to work around the clock assembling toys and
packaging them up. It wasn’t as exciting as spending time on his own
company would be. “I was putting together wagons and bikes,” says
Keith. “God, it was boring.” He was just coming off the graveyard shift
aft er spending his third night straight surrounded by dolls and train
sets. He was tired and irritable.
Th e only bright spot in the experience had been chatting a bit to a
cute girl who was also working nights. “I kind of liked her,” says Keith.
“She’d talk to me a little, but she wasn’t really giving me the
time of day the way I wanted.” Th e two were getting ready to
leave in the morning aft er work and Keith decided he had to
do something to get her attention. As she turned to go to the
workshop, Keith took drastic action. “I picked up a little kid’s
ball that was sitting there. It was made of a soft cloth, so I threw
it at her. I don’t really know what I was thinking. I never could
throw straight.” Th e shot, intended as a playful fl irtation, misfi red
badly. Instead of hitting the girl, it fl ew wide and smashed a bare
light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Th e sparks that fl ew off as
the light shattered went everywhere. Keith watched in horror
as the Christmas decorations scattered throughout Toyland
ignited and started to burn. Th e stuff ed toys also went up in
fl ames, causing the fi re to spread. Th e smoke and heat set off the
sprinklers. Whatever wasn’t being wrecked by the fl ames was being
soaked by water. Keith’s survival instincts took over and the cute girl
was quickly forgotten. “I fl ew down the stairs and didn’t look back,”
says Keith. “I never did go back, not even for the three days’ pay they
owed me.”
Since he disappeared that morning, never to return, he didn’t learn the
fate of the Toyland contents until years later, and then only by accident.
When fundraising for a piece of medical equipment he was gift ing to
Burnaby Hospital, Keith approached the Woodward’s Foundation for a
donation. When he met with a Woodward descendent, he introduced
himself by sheepishly telling him the story of the bad throw. “I was
shocked when he told me that he remembered talk about the incident,”
says Keith. “I guess they weren’t too pleased because the water messed
up a bunch of the toys.”
Keith never learned the value of the toys destroyed by his bad aim, but
the next time he was connected to a Woodward’s Toyland fl ood there was
a dollar fi gure of over $1 million in damages. Decades later, Th e Beedie
Group purchased the old Simmons mattress building on Parker Street
in Vancouver. Th e building was being used for storage and the Beedies
inherited Woodward’s as a tenant. Th e department store was using the
bottom two fl oors of the four-storey structure for six months of the year
to store toys. Th e U-shaped structure was an unusual design, spanning a
“I donʼt really
know what I
was thinking.
I never could
throw straight.”
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