The Pelehos Family
Tony Pelehos and his popcorn cart at the corner of 2nd Avenue South and 21st Street East, ca.1940
Photo Source: Saskatoon Public Library Local History (LH-6021)
Tony Pelehos was priceless with popcorn. He ran a popcorn stand in downtown Saskatoon for years. From the 1920s through the ’50s he stood on the sidewalk at the corner of 21st Street and Second Avenue, near the Elite Cafe and across the street from the United Cigar Store and Pinder’s Drugs. As kernels in his popper were popping, Tony talked and laughed. His smile could melt butter. If people wanted popcorn but didn’t have money, Tony gave them a bag anyway. Even in winter he was busy. The Popcorn King, people called him.
Jim Pelehos was Tony’s son. Like his father, Jim was a mover and shaker. After Jim served in the Canadian navy, he worked in Saskatoon for Kaleta Ticket agency and Harry Lyons advertising, for First Investors Corp, and Athletic Equipment Sales. He was the manager of Doc Landa’s Carlsbad Hotel in Manitou Beach.
For three years in the mid-’60s, Jim owned JP James Candy Products, running a warehouse in Riversdale that supplied stores with caramel corn and candied apples. That was Jim the businessman.
People appreciated volunteer Jim. He spent time. He gave energy.
In Saskatchewan, he was active behind the scenes with the Saskatoon Elks and Humboldt Indians hockey clubs. In B.C., he was a fundraiser for the New Westminster Royals hockey team and Vancouver’s minor lacrosse association. In Alberta, he was Bill Hunter’s go-to guy in promoting the Edmonton Oil Kings junior team and the WHA’s Edmonton Oilers.
For 28 years, he did a barrel of things in Wetaskiwin, a city in central Alberta where he lived. Jim sold wreaths for a poppy fund. He started an activity club for seniors. He helped launch the Wetaskiwin and County Sports Hall of Fame, being enshrined into the hall as a sports builder four years later.
Jim was 90 when he died on New Year’s in 2011. He is interred beside his dad at Woodlawn Cemetery in Saskatoon. Greece is their homeland, Saskatoon their place.
Tony Pelehos was born and raised in Greece. With Greece’s economy in a bog at the end of the 19th century, Tony left his sheep-herding parents and his brother Peter when he was 14, travelling to Canada with two of his friends.
At first Tony was a busboy in Halifax, then in Winnipeg. When he settled in Saskatoon and was working in a restaurant, he met a young woman who was also working in a restaurant. Her parents, Joseph and Eudocia Boyko, emigrated from Ukraine to a homestead in Prud’homme, a village northeast of Saskatoon. They raised eight children in a three-room house that had clay walls and a straw roof.
Their daughter Sophie moved to Saskatoon when she was 15. She worked in restaurants. She met Tony. Sophie and Tony were married in 1920. That same year, with Sophie at home visiting her parents, son Jim was born in Prud’homme.
Sophie and Tony added a second child, daughter Katherine, three years later.
Tony worked for a few more years in the ’20s as a waiter, including at the Capitol Cafe near the KG Hotel on Second Avenue. By 1927 he was on his own, selling jolly time popcorn and fresh roasted peanuts.
“Tony’s Here to Please You”, read the sign on his sidewalk cart. Business was his pleasure.
Spero Leakos, whose father Steve owned the New Commodore Cafe a block north of Pelehos on Second Avenue, enjoyed talking with Tony. “When I knew him, he was older, but he was a young old,” Spero said. “He had a smile on his face all the time.”
Jim Kosmas came to Saskatoon in 1951 from Kastri in southern Greece. “I was 16 years old, a shy boy,” said Kosmas. “The highlight of the day was going for a soda or milkshake at the Commodore, Elite or Shasta Cafe. Kids at Tech (Collegiate) would walk over for popcorn from Tony. Oh, yes, I remember that.” Kosmas has gone on to own The Cave Restaurant on Eighth Street with his brothers, John and Peter.
Tony Pelehos lived a life of giving. He set the record for selling the most tickets to the AHEPA dance and buffet, an annual Greek event in Saskatoon. Every year, he donated a day of his pay from selling popcorn to charity, usually to the Red Cross. He had a Christmas tradition, giving holiday gifts to children in poor families. Although he didn’t make much himself, he was big on helping others. “He died when I was four, so I didn’t know him well,” said his granddaughter Joy, one of Jim Pelehos’s six children and is his first of two sets of twins. “What I remember is he always brought us six kids a basket of fruit. I remember him standing at his popcorn wagon. I remember the smell of popcorn.”
Jim Pelehos followed his father’s lead. Jim worked the fair circuit in the summer, selling caramel corn and candy apples and cotton candy. He went to the Vancouver PNE and the Calgary Stampede, to Klondike Days in Edmonton and the Red River Ex in Winnipeg. When his children were old enough, they worked with him.
The family travelled in a wood panelled Buick, hauling a trailer throughout Western Canada and to the East, going to Ottawa and Toronto and Hull, Que. They dipped apples and spun floss. They staffed the booth, encouraging fairgoers to get your fresh hot popcorn. “We were carny girls,” Joy said, laughing. “Actually, Dad was very protective of us. It was a good experience. We learned to work hard. We learned how to handle money. We travelled.” Added Joy’s twin sister June: “Just don’t talk about the time the trailer tipped over when we were on that mountain pass in B.C.”
Their younger sister Debra remembers the summer she was 12 and joined a Pelehos crew who were already at the exhibition in Prince Albert. “When I went to the bus station, the bus had already gone, so I took a cab from Saskatoon to Prince Albert,” she said. “The days at an exhibition were long. We’d be there at 11 in the morning and leave at 11 at night. But there was such electricity on the grounds, such spontaneity. Because we worked there, we could go on rides for free. The Tilt-a-Whirl was one of my favourites.”
Debra lives in B.C., as does her twin sister Dawn, her brother Jim Jr., and her oldest sister Lee. Joy lives in Hawaii; June in Saskatchewan.
Joy and June both visited Greece in the 1970s. Joy met her grandfather’s brother Peter there.
Their dad drove them to Expo in Montreal in 1967. “Dad was charismatic,” Debra said. “He had a sense of community, a sense of fairness and a good sense of humour.” Said Joy: “He told me ‘If you want to get ahead, do the jobs people don’t want to do.’ People say I have a lot of Dad in me. Go, go, go. Think positive. For him and my grandfather, their love of Saskatoon never ended. I want people to remember the difference they made in the city,” said June: “I want people to know just the generosity of their giving.”
Source: Bob Florence, “Popcorn King taught family value of hard work”, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, January 5, 2015.