Thirty years after first opening its doors, Flin Flon Pharmasave is celebrating its anniversary and long-time staff members are sharing memories of a local institution.
The pharmacy first opened its doors in the summer of 1994, owned by Scott Davidson and operating out of 35 Main Street, next door to their present location. Shonnah Hanson started working at Pharmasave 30 years ago and has been with the store since the very beginning - “Right from the start, more or less,” she said, even before the pharmacy officially opened.
“I can’t remember exactly how many staff we had - we might have had about six of us,” she recalled.
Leslie Fernandes has been around nearly since the beginning of the store’s existence - she started as a high school student, being hired on about a month after Pharmasave opened through a work placement program. Since then, she’s worked in several different positions, including the one she holds now as a pharmacy tech.
“I knew I wanted to do something pharmacy-related, so I ended up here as a work placement and spent my high school years here - then I went off to school and ended up coming back and working for Scott,” she said.
“I’ve been here in my capacity as a pharmacy tech since 1996, so I’ve done it all as a student, working on the floor, then in the pharmacy - I’ve kind of covered the whole ground.”
Melissa Bolton-Streitle has worked for Pharmasave for 17 years - if you enter the store, you’ll like see her standing at the cash register as the front store clerk.
“I learned so much from the different people who have worked here. They’ve all taught me so much, Janet Hancock and different people like that - I kind of learned all my tricks that I do now from them,” she said.
Over the years, the store has changed, shifting from different locations, including to their current spot at 37 Main Street. Pharmasave has also maintained a pharmacy in the Flin Flon Community Clinic building, officially named after Murray Davidson, father of original owner Scott - the clinic is now home to the practice of Dr. Caitlyn Davidson Meyer, Scott’s daughter and Murray’s granddaughter.
The ownership behind Pharmasave has changed as well - no longer locally owned, the Pharmasave is now owned by Toronto-based pharmacy chain Neighbourly, though the staff remains entirely local. The managers of the business, Corey and Susan Thompson, are still locally based.
That time has come with its own challenges and pitfalls. Fernandes mentions the fire situation earlier this year and the associated communications outage as a specific challenge, where neither phones or internet service worked, the main highway link to Flin Flon was closed and people still needed to pick up prescriptions.
“That was hard. No one planned for that,” she said.
Another recent challenge came when the Flin Flon Walmart pharmacy, Pharmasave’s main local competition, was closed for a time due to a fire in the store - that sent everyone who normally got their meds from Walmart over to Pharmasave, pushing several hundred new customers to the store. At one point in the past, the store flooded, causing havoc for workers to try and keep inventory dry while still providing medication.
The role the pharmacy and store plays in local health care has been a constant - something people can recognize at a time when most local medical care in Flin Flon has either relied on out-of-town locums on rotation or a long line of doctors who work locally before moving on. While health practitioners have come and gone, the pharmacy staff has been constant, even sometimes providing some context for long-time customers for incoming doctors.
The business side has thrived because of how the pharmacy welcomed in the community, say its employees. There’s a human side to the work that each staff member holds dear.
“I think it’s one of those places where you can still come and people know who you are - we can visit, we can joke, we’re not going to rush you out the door like, ‘We’ve got your money, now bugger off.’ That’s what I find with it - it has a local flavour and that’s carried on,” said Hanson.
“For the most part, it’s been great. People come to you because they need your help - they need something and that’s what community pharmacy is all about, right? You can have an easy, accessible health care professional, you can walk into a pharmacy, you can ask questions, we can help you with various things. I think that was the point of what Scott wanted to create when he started this all those years ago - a community-based pharmacy,” said Fernandes.
“I think, for a lot of us that work here, we are so involved in the community, not just through the store. A lot of us are involved through different organizations - we’re very community minded and that’s kind of the way we want us to be,” said Bolton-Streitle.
Over time, especially for longer-term employees, the pharmacy became almost a second family, a home away from home where coworkers have come to rally around each other and the community at large.
“We’ve worked together for so long that we just kind of build our own family. People come and go and you see new faces from time to time, but our core little group that has been here all along, we’re just a little family,” Fernandes said.
“This is more than just my job here - I’ve been with most of these people for so long that we’re all like a big family. I think that’s what helps keep us all close. We’ve all had different things, important events in our lives, where we’ve all been there for each other. I think that’s really important and probably what’s kept us going for so long - we try to be there for each other and our community,” said Bolton-Streitle.
