'End of an era': Staff at Calgary's Crown Surplus prepare for closure

Crown Surplus in Inglewood is closing for good at the end of the month.  

Current owner John Cumming is the third generation in his family to run the store.

He took over from his dad, Gordon Cumming, and grandfather Al Cumming, who opened the business in 1953.

"We got the name Crown Surplus store because my father and grandfather used to buy from Crown Assets," John said. "It used to be the resting place for ex-Canadian Forces product, and that's how they got the name Crown Surplus."

The store closes on Nov. 30, the remaining inventory will be packed up and moved to Drumheller to a store under the same name but with a different owner.

The Drumheller location opened this past summer.

John says there's a lot of product that has accumulated in Calgary over the seven decades that Crown Surplus has been open.

"We've been in business just over 71 years," he said. "I think I've sold about ten years of product and I probably have another 61 years of product to go."

John says he'll miss the regular customers, but not the headaches that come from being a small business owner.

"A lot of the stories now, with people coming in saying goodbye to us," he said. "They remember their father bringing them in when they were young, and now they're bringing in their kids, and it's absolutely a generational business."

John says the store's clients have been made up of collectors, survivalists, paintball and airsoft players, hunters, tree planters and people looking for the perfect military Halloween costume.

However, there were also a lot of celebrities who showed up unannounced.

John remembers saying hi to a person he thought was a regular customer.

"My brother-in-law comes along, and he goes, 'Do you know who that is?' and I'm like, 'Yeah it's a customer,'" said John. "He goes, 'That's Heath Ledger.'"

John wasn't the only one caught off guard by a celebrity encounter.

He says he remembers one of his staff members named Paul who met two "unkept" people that sounded English and asked them if they were in Calgary on vacation, but they said they were working in the film industry.

It turns out the men were Hollywood actors Paul Anderson and Tom Hardy.

The store has hosted a variety of staff in its 70-some years, many of which were Canadian Veterans, but most had a passion for the military.

Laurie Skreslet grew up a few blocks away from Crown Surplus, and says he remembers spending a lot of time there as an eight-year-old, peppering then-owner Al Cumming with constant questions.

"He finally told (the staff) to get me out of his hair by putting me in the back and putting me to work," says Skreslet. "And that's how I ended up working as a very young person here at the store, cleaning old firearms that would come in, making them look good to sell them."

Skreslet says when he was in Grade 7, she asked for a piece from the store to take for show-and-tell.

"I got Gordon to loan me a super bazooka," he said. "A 3.5 inch rocket launcher with a deactivated rocket, and I took it to school for show and tell. I thought for sure I'm going to win show tell, but then (the teachers and principal) made me leave the school with it."

Skreslet has gone on to be a successful mountaineer who summited Mount Everest in 1982, and started a tradition of bringing a piece of the store with him to the top of mountains.

"When I summited Everest in '82, I made sure I had a pair of five-finger wool gloves that cost $0.95 – a pair we used to sell here at the store – underneath my over mitts," he said.

"There was always something on my body that came from Crown Surplus."

Skreslet is sad to see the store close, but he appreciates John's desire to enjoy retirement.

"it's the end of an era," he said. "It's sad that that John is closing it, but he's ready to move on to other things."

John says the land is up for sale and will most likely be turned into residential property, but he's still in negotiations with the developer and nothing's been finalized at this point.

He says he has fond memories of the store, playing hide-and-seek with friends and has a few keepsakes.

"I have a few things that I cherish that are on my mantle," he said. "I have a propeller from an (Avro) Anson (aircraft) that's just leaning up against the wall and a couple of flags, and that's about it."