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Photo Central is celebrating the life of a father and business visionary this month.
Dick Toews, who founded the business in 1991, passed away earlier this month at the age of 85. According to his son, Andrew Toews, the present owner of Photo Central, a love of photography was instilled in him from an early age, growing up on the family farm outside the small community of Kane where his family also ran the general store.
“Being the kid of a hardworking family, he had to put in his time somewhere,” Toews says. “One of the things they sold were photographic supplies and cameras as they were back then, and I think that would have been his first contact with the equipment and he fell in love with it.”
In 1975, Dick found himself working in at Independent Photo at Independent Jewelers in Winnipeg. Eventually, the photo department became so large that the jewelry business offered him the chance to buy the photo store that would become Photo Central in 1991.
Andrew notes that the store’s success from its early years to the present day lies on the bedrock of his dad’s family values of camaraderie and fellowship. “We love taking time with people,” Andrew says of the store’s culture. “I visited the store when I was a child. People were just in the store. They were talking. They would spend time there. They would have a coffee. There were places to sit, and he delighted in that – building those relationships – and there’s a lot of prominent relationships in his life and then in mine that came through that store.”
In the wake of his passing, more people have come forward in recent weeks to share their stories of Dick and the relationships they had with him. “The common denominator in all of them is the time he took with people,” Andrew recounts. “Whether it was somebody who was prominent in business or whether it was somebody coming in off the street who needed money for lunch and everyone in between. He never differentiated between people.”
Andrew also shared about the special connection that his father had toward Rossbrook House, a drop-in centre for children living in Winnipeg’s Point Douglas neighbourhood. “We came in contact with a couple of nuns who worked at Rossbrook House as customers,” he says. “And of course, Rossbrook operates on a shoestring budget. They do so much with so little and they’re just fantastic people. And we recognized a need there and got to know Sister Margeret [Hughes] very well and just delighted in her company. It’s just an amazing, passionate ministry.”
Donations to Rossbrook House can be made in Dick Toews’ memory through Rossbrook House’s website.