After four decades in the community, this local shop is a real gem.
Long-time councillor and local business owner, Peter Dykie is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Bradford Jewellery with a special event this Saturday, May 4 from 1 to 4 p.m. in the store at 9 Holland St. E., where he will be joined by friends, family and local dignitaries.
Door-crasher gifts are expected to be available for the first 100 guests, but there could be far more people who want to stop by the shop and share words of congratulations as Dykie has made plenty of friends in his time running the store and serving the community.
“My first set of wedding bands I made for a couple, they’re neighbours of mine,” he said.
A well-known tale to long-time residents, Dykie actually started selling jewellery out of a briefcase at Bradford District High School in 1983 when he was in Grade 11 after having trouble finding a summer job and having had his fill of picking weeds on farms and packing onions and carrots.
“I saw an opportunity that I could buy silver and gold and I would sell it to my friends,” he said.
That opportunity came while working part-time for his uncle tending bar at the Village Inn, where a few regulars came in every Saturday, and happened to be in the business of buying and selling jewellery.
“They invited me to Markham and showed me how it was done,” Dykie said. “They invited me to their office and gave me a chance to buy from them.”
Along with one of his high school friends, Dykie started selling silver and gold chains, necklaces, bracelets, charms, promise rings, earrings and the eagle pendants that were so popular at the time, both at school and at home parties.
“That’s how we did it. We used to buy it in bulk and then I used to use the science class at Bradford High to weigh the gold, because I didn’t have the money to buy a scale,” Dykie said. “It was very simple.”
The first storefront and a run for council
By April of the next year, he was able to obtain a $2,000 student venture loan from RBC bank, and thanks to a good word from then-Deputy Reeve Frances Reid — whose grass he used to cut — Dykie was able to rent his first storefront at 3 Barrie St., currently home to the Bradford Wolves Soccer Club.
That was the beginning of what is now a 40-year business legacy, and a pattern of always having multiple roles to fill.
His mother watched the store during the day while he was taking business administration at Humber College, and then he’d run the store in the evening, while at the same time starting to become involved in local politics.
In addition to knowing Reid and his uncle Bill Dykie being on council, having the storefront helped him to meet more members of council, including long-time member Dennis Roughley, whom Dykie credits as one of his inspirations to run for council at only age 18.
“I was very green, but I figured why not? I was living in the community, why not give back to the community,” he said, explaining he became involved in 1984 and was first elected to Bradford council in 1985.
That triple workload continued as he went to George Brown College in the late 1980s, where he learned to create his own jewellery, and later Toronto Metropolitan University (then known as Ryerson University).
“You just do it,” Dykie said to explain how he managed it all. “Now, it catches up to you, but when you’re young and you have the drive, you just do it. When you have nothing, you strive really hard to build something.”
After graduating from Humber, Dykie recalled many of his friends taking jobs “on the ground floor” of the information technology industry, getting jobs at Dell, Hewlett-Packard and even Microsoft, but his passion for jewellery couldn’t be shaken, even when he was offered a job elsewhere for about $29,000 a year.
It may have helped that his own business was doing so well at the time.
“I used to sell a lot of engagement rings at Humber College. I still have friends today who became life-long friends from Humber,” Dykie said. “In my younger days — before the shopping channel, before different trends in the market, before Amazon — I was able to make a good living at a young age.”
Things were going so well, that Dykie and his partner eventually expanded to three different locations, including in the Kozlov Mall in Barrie and at 133 Yonge St. in Aurora.
Weathering financially tough times
It hasn’t all been good times, though, and just as Dykie “leveraged everything” to buy out his partner in 1991, the economy had entered a recession which lasted until about 1994.
“I had (a) rough time in the ’90s. That’s why I had sell two stores,” he said. “I decided to plant my feet in Bradford.”
From there, things generally improved, as the business weathered the economic downturn of the early 2000s as well as the financial crisis of the late 2000s, and the storefront moved locations in the downtown a few times before friends, family and local dignitaries came out to celebrate the 25th anniversary at 5 Holland St. E. in April 2009.
Then, just seven months later, in the early morning hours of Friday, Nov. 20, the store experienced its first major theft as a group of thieves managed to break in and clear out multiple display cases worth of jewellery, including items brought it for the holiday shopping season.
“That was a big theft. They cut the store wide open at six in the morning and I lost about $290,000,” Dykie said, noting he wasn’t able to recover much from insurance. “That almost bankrupted me.”
Luckily, there were “a lot of good friends” and even clients who stepped up to help him out.
“I had a client who came up with an open cheque book offering to help,” he said.
That generosity was a beacon of light in what was then the darkest thing to happen at the store, “until the guy held a gun at me,” Dykie said, in reference to the failed armed robbery of his current storefront on the afternoon of July 6 last year.
“That was the scariest moment of my life to have someone hold a gun to me. I thought I was done that day,” Dykie said. “When he put the gun to (long-time employee) Robin (Visser), and I thought here’s an innocent employee and friend, my mind flipped and I grabbed him and he hit me over the head with the gun.”
After receiving 10 stitches at hospital that afternoon, Dykie was able to return home that evening, and in the following days, he and his family received an outpouring of support from the community.
In addition to phones calls, cards, personal visits and baked goods, Dykie also received an offer from local business, Channel Industrial Group, to help build a brand new vestibule over about six months at the front of the store to improve both safety and security.
Now customers need to be buzzed in, first through an outer door and then through a second inner door, plus the store has an upgraded security system, with improved cameras.
“You talk about a community building within community, but the businesses were also helping each other. That’s what makes Bradford such a unique place. You can’t put a price on that,” he said.
Still, Dykie does what he can to give back to the community, by donating to various fundraisers.
“Honestly, it’s too much. He can’t say no,” Visser said. “It’s for everything. It’s Jack and Jill showers, or the legion or the library — everything.”
Constants in a sea of change
That sense of community is one of the constants Dykie said he’s seen over the last 40 years, while plenty of other things have changed, including continual shifts in tastes and trends which he sees at an international jewellery conference the first week of June each year.
More recently, those shifts seem motivated at least in part by the increased price of gold, which recently hit about $3,200 per ounce.
While the price of gold fluctuates daily, Dykie explained he would usually sell a typical gold chain in the 1980s for about $300, but today, that same chain would cost at least $3,000.
While the business still sees plenty of repairs, custom engagement rings and wedding bands, Dykie is also noticing younger generations recycling older jewellery, and as a result, he’s been remodelling some pieces he sold decades ago in current styles for the children of those clients.
He’s also seen businesses come and go from the downtown as demographics shift and the population continues to grow, from the roughly 4,500 people he estimated to be living in town when he was first elected to council in 1985, to the 42,880 people counted in the 2021 census.
“So about ten times. The gold went up ten times, the population went up ten times, everything just multiplied,” he said.
Fortunately, that community growth has led to increased support for the local business, which Dykie credits for helping keep things afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Support is coming from within as well, with son Justin primed to help run the store and already two years into a three-year jewellery course at the same Casa Loma campus of George Brown College, where he’s currently top of his class.
“Believe it or not, one of my professors taught my dad,” Justin said with smile.
Despite spending plenty of time in the store while growing up — frequently under the watchful eye of Visser — Justin was previously set to become an electrician.
Then the pandemic hit, and as with many people, his plans were short circuited.
That’s when he began to share his father’s passion for jewellery.
“I always thought I’d be an electrician, but I left that job and came here. I started working and realized this is pretty cool as my dad started teaching me all the background behind how it’s all made,” Justin said. “I can’t see myself doing anything else now.”
Visser has worked at the store on and off for 37 years and joked that Dykie is unlikely to ever fully retire and hand over the business, but Justin doesn’t see that as a problem. He appreciates the opportunity to work with his father in the legacy he built.
“You know what, I love the business,” Justin said. “This is his pride. This is not something I’m expecting to just be given to me.”
