Museum History

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History of the Garage

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The garage had been the brain child of entrepreneur Roy Eamon, who had purchased land in 1947, and started a chicken business.  When the chicken business burned down in 1949, he built a new business, a restaurant.

Once again, tragedy struck the entrepreneur when the restaurant also caught fire and burned to the ground a year later.  Eamon who was blessed with an indomitable spirit, not only rebuilt the restaurant, but added a super service station and later bungalows in 1952 which he named, “Eamon’s One-Stop Service Centre.”  In 1966, the station was forced to close down when Texaco couldn’t obtain the license needed to operate the station off the highway.

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Roy Eamon, sold the one stop service centre to Bob Everett and his business partner Jim Sibthorpe in 1986, the same year the iconic singer Corey Hart featured the garage in his video, I am by your side.  (See the full video here.)

 

Everett and Sibthorpe sold the station in the 1990’s.  The building faced an uncertain future, while the City of Calgary tried to determine what to do with the garage once it was moved to make way for the expansion of the LRT Line. The garage was placed in storage in Stavely, Alberta, while its original art-moderne style neon sign was placed at the entrance of the Tuscany LRT station lot, bridging the past, present, and the future.

 

Background

 

In the winter of 2016, the Eamon’s Garage historic building was purchased from the City of Calgary and moved to the High River Agricultural grounds. In the spring of 2017, the building was placed on a screw pile foundation and the restoration of the historic building was started. A plan was developed to have the front entry and west bay displayed as a typical service station of the 1950’s aera and the east bay as a meeting room available to the community for meetings, seminars or other community functions and to have an automobile museum and workshop addition at the back of the Garage in the future. By the end of 2018 most of the restoration of the interior and exterior of the building was completed by volunteers and in September the Eamon’s Garage Historical Society was formed and registered with the Alberta Government. In the April of 2019, the Society’s name was changed to the River City Classics & Eamon’s Garage Historical Society and the washroom addition to the back of the Garage was started and completed by the end of the year by volunteers.