Niagara area Dairy Queen remains frozen in time

Is the Dairy Queen in Port Colborne the last one in Canada with the original design – complete with a broken sign?

The frozen treat stand at 73 Main St E was actually the second Dairy Queen in Canada. Opened in 1954, it was serving up cones several months after the country’s first franchise in Melville, Saskatchewan.

However, it might just be the last one with the design that people remember from their childhoods in the 1960s and 1970s as head office started rebranding their outlets as “DQ” for the past couple of decades.

As for the sign that no longer lights up and can’t be fixed, one area resident had this explanation. “I talked to the (former) owner years ago. He told me that if they took the old neon sign down to get it fixed that Dairy Queen won’t let them put it back up (forcing the DQ rebranding). So it had to stay as is, broken. It’s a shame head office doesn’t see the value in having a nostalgic location like this!”

However, the present franchisee, Rick Wilsher, emailed inniagararegion to say “in regards to the sign we’re actually having a 70-year anniversary next year and we’re going to be re-lighting that sign. I’ve already have a contract with a neon company and a sign restoration company to do so – it’s not going to be removed from the roof and I’m not going to have to have my franchise contract revoked.”

Wilsher added that “a very prominent developer and I are actually doing a Netflix special on the history of the Dairy Queen coming to Canada, the age of the sign and the love story in between my first store and this store.” (Welsher’s first store was in Wayland, about 70 km east of Wawa.)

“It’s quite an interesting story but any event in regards to the sign yes it is fixable and yes it is getting fixed and next year’s my 70 year anniversary and we’re going to celebrate that by offering menu items of that era for that price.”

The interior of the Port Colborne was restored to its original 1950s specs in the early 2000s. In a sign of the times, the 1954 then-mandatory segregated window now holds an air conditioner.

Many believe if the Port Colborne Dairy Queen at 73 Main St. E. tried to fix its sign, it would be forced to remodel with the DQ rebranding.