In March 1919 Sam Cohen, a native of San Francisco, and his brothers Joe and Harry opened a store at 44 West Hastings Street in Vancouver, B.C. to sell surplus army boots. Originally known as the Liberty store, the name was changed to Army & Navy in 1922, probably to leverage the marketing from the long-established English Army & Navy stores. The store sold military surplus as well as goods from other stores closing down and even advertised its own closing in 1927 as a publicity gimmick, reopening as ‘new and improved’ months later.

Sam bought out his brothers and, in 1938, bought a five-storey building at 27 West Hastings St., turning the original location into a shoe annex. In 1948 he opened a new store on Cordova street and in 1959 bought the adjacent Rex Theatre to tear down the 1913 movie palace for a nondescript expansion. Over the years the business expanded across Western Canada to include stores in New Westminster, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and Moose Jaw. The original location became famous for its annual shoe sale, first held in 1949.

Management of the business passed to his son Jack, but a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, necessitated bringing in Garth Kennedy, a non-family member, to help Jack manage the company for three decades. Jack’s son died of a drug overdose in 1978 and his eldest daughter died in a car crash in 1982, leaving his youngest daughter Jacqui to take over the family business, which she did after Jack died in 1995, and Kennedy died in 1998.

The Army and Navy became the longest running department store in Vancouver. However, department stores have been struggling with low profit margins since the 1980s, and even more so since the turn-of-the-century with online shopping. COVID-19 was too much for the business and the Army & Navy stores did not reopen after the quarantine shutdown in March.

Jacob Wolfe Rosberg and Mary (Mindel) and their four children emigrated from Kielce, Poland to Toronto in 1913. After a few years, the family moved to Niagara Falls to open a menswear shop that supplied workers at the Queenston hydroelectric project. On October 18^th, 1919, the shop opened near the corner of Erie and Queen streets in downtown Niagara Falls. Over the next fifty years the business grew into a three story department store filling an entire city block. The buildings were refaced in the late 1960s with the name ROSBERGS prominently displayed on the façade. 

Rosberg’s wasn’t a high end department store. It was where you went to buy back-to-school clothes, underwear, uniforms, and Canadian-made everyday fashions for work and home. A branch was opened in Welland, Ontario when the store was at its peak of success in the 1950s/60s. 

Competition for Rosbergs increased as major stores like Sears and Eaton’s anchored malls in the region (Pen Centre in 1958, and Seaway Mall in 1975). The era of the department store declined as shopping malls became more successful in the 1970s and 1980s. Rosbergs closed in 1988 and the building sat dormant until it was consumed by fire in 2009.

A granddaughter of the founders, Jacob and Mary Rosberg, was Barbara Rosburg (1937 – 1992) who was better known as CBC anchor journalist Barbara Frum.