Illustrated are the rough conditions of the early streets, the wooden shops, and the types of goods for sale to a mining population. The early discount store was owned by Dan Rothschild who, like several other merchants in Sudbury, started his business by selling goods from a packsack to railway construction workers before the rails reached the site of the community. Merchandise was brought in by rail from Montreal at first, but Toronto quickly replaced Montreal as the main distributing centre. Rothschild later specialized in liquor, and when prohibition came into effect in Ontario in 1916, he practised what became the common Ontario custom for several years of setting up a Montreal mail-order office to supply local residents.
