The Gift Bowl, Sauble Beach, in the late 1950s. It’s still there today and still looks pretty much the same.

By this time Jack Robertson (my father) and Wally Scott (my uncle) had formed a company called Scott-Robertson Enterprises to manage their growing Sauble Beach businesses. (I remember as a little boy being terribly impressed by all the corporate stamps in dad’s desk.) They also decided that both of them weren’t needed to run the Pavilion. So Jack became the main manager of the Pavilion, and Wally took over the Gift Bowl. In time, Scott-Robertson would build the Starlight Roller Rink and my aunt Esther would manage that. It was quite a growing little empire!

In the spirit of family pitch-in, I was a pin boy at the Gift Bowl on a few occasions in the late 1960s - before automatic pin machines were installed. It was quite a job, and you had to be nimble in case you miscounted and jumped down to set up the pins just as a customer launched his last ball. I also used to love to come down here and buy plastic model airplanes from the gift shop. I would build them, fly them, and then stuff them full of firecrackers and watch them blow sky-high. Ah ... those were the days!