GUEST POST by Joe Barkovich, Scribbler-at-large

WELLAND – The hottest selling item in Welland back in December, 1972? That’s easy: the mug sold by the Kiwanis Club to commemorate the final raising of Main Street bridge on the cold, snowy night of December 15.

I’ll drink to that. As it turned out, thousands of Wellanders did.

Brad Clements, a Kiwanis Club member at the time, recalls the club decided to sell the mugs as part of the festivities it was organizing to celebrate the historic occasion.

The fundraiser led to debate among the membership, he said.

“Some wanted to order 300 mugs. Others wanted to order 500 mugs. When we found out we had to order a minimum of 1,000, it caused some concern over the risk we would be taking. It didn’t take long for that to turn into a joke.”

The 1,000 mugs sold out in under an hour. Most were sold from Kiwanis Club member Bill Lewis’s East Main Street pharmacy. Clements said two subsequent orders for mugs were placed because of demand and as chronicled in Lewis’s A History Of The City Of Welland (Volume 3), 22,000 souvenir mugs were sold!

A popular sales venue was Welland market, recalled Clements but there were others too.

He remembers some buyers snapping up 10 or more mugs at a time, some as gifts for friends or family members or “people who used to live in Welland but moved away.”

A sales-duty bonus was being regaled by stories shared by mug buyers about what the bridge meant to them.

“People would tell us their stories and memories of the bridge. A lot had to do with using it as an excuse for when they were late for something,” he said.

Clements couldn’t recall the selling price of the mugs, but guessed it was “two or three dollars.”

Always a proud Wellander, he still has the mug he purchased for an event that took place 50 years ago tomorrow – Thursday, December 15, when Welland was changed forever.

“Wouldn’t part with it,” he said.