Today's main image appeared for sale on the web last month (labelled erroneously) but a friend and I have now returned it back home to Kitchener-Waterloo. Beyond being a wonderful Real Photo Post Card from the 19-teens, it opens a window on a neglected slice of local history.

The photographer stood in the middle of King Street South in Waterloo, at the intersection of what is today Willis Way but was also known over the years as Weaver, Weber or Herbert. From the right, the four numbered and named shops behind the banana truck are: At No. 74, New Corner Grocery (behind the truck); No. 72, Butler Bicycle and Kroetsch & Boppre Painters (with the peaked roof); No. 68, B. Longo Fruits (figure in doorway); No. 66, Charlie Sing Laundry (the two-storey flat-roofed building with three windows).

All these businesses appear in the 1913 directory, although New Corner Grocery was Allan Moyer's Grocery. The next available directory, 1918, shows only B. Longo Fruits and Charlie Sing as constants. The other businesses were gone by then and the corner store was owned by Baldassaro Longo.

The photo was probably taken to mark the New Corner Grocery store's opening. The truck is a 1914 Buick, so the photo had to have been taken sometime between 1914 and 1918.

Baldassaro was one of at least eight siblings from Termini, now part of the city of Palermo, in Sicily. Among the earliest Italian immigrants here, they arrived with parents Leboria and Rosa Longo in the late 19th century. Most settled for life in Berlin or Waterloo and most were involved in the wholesale and retail fruit business.

Baldassaro, with younger brother Tony, began the Waterloo store around 1906, setting up at 68 King St. S. Presumably, they are the pair standing by the truck with Baldassaro's son Victor as driver. The bananas, from the Caribbean or Central America, would have arrived via Grand Trunk Railway at the Longo Brothers wholesale yard in Berlin at 100 Ahrens St. W., where Smile Tiger Coffee is now located.

In addition to the wholesale yard, the four other Longo brothers had a store in Berlin.

In Waterloo, Baldassaro and Tony sold retail and supplied other shops from 68 King St. S. With the opening of the New Corner Grocery, a wider range of groceries was offered.

Following Tony's death in 1921, Baldassaro and wife Carolina tried to keep both stores going, but sold the corner location the following year. Until the mid-1930s, the couple maintained the original at 68 King. In 1935, Baldassaro died at the age of 71, so son Victor and his wife Jean helped Carolina run the store. In 1942, it was sold to William Boteff, who continued the fruit business.

The Longos from 19th-century Sicily created a vibrant new life for their family in the New World, not to mention an eight-decades-long business empire in Waterloo and Berlin and later Kitchener.

Charlie Sing represents another component of early 20th-century diversity. Born in China in 1859, he came to Canada in 1888, one of the thousands of Chinese men who helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway. He appeared in Waterloo around 1906, operating a laundry at 66 King St. beside the first Longo store.

For 15 years Charlie Sing ran the Best Laundry, but in 1922 he was replaced by Joe Lee, who lasted just a couple of years until the business was taken over by Hop Wo. Until the late 1940s, Hop Wo was a well-known downtown Waterloo personality and there may well be readers who still recall the friendly laundryman.

Shortly after this photo was taken, 72 King St. S. became Dominion Café (later Royal Café), operated by other Chinese immigrants including Charlie Yuen and Chong Langh. That began a still-going-strong series of Chinese restaurants along the east side of Waterloo's King Street South.

The Longos, the Sings, the Wos, the Yuens and the Langhs represent of an area of local history which has been poorly researched and publicized: the non-Anglo, non-Germanic immigrants who helped create these two cities.

Many more nationalities added to the growth of the area. A friend tells me of his Lebanese Christian grandfather arriving in the area around 1905. He walked the roads of Waterloo County buying and selling used goods and trinkets before opening a fruit market in east-end Kitchener. The family went on to establish the legendary Izma's Five Points store.

Recent work by Joanna Rickert-Hall has begun opening windows on the history and contributions of early Black residents in Berlin.

Little has been written about the early 1900s industry created by Jewish "junk dealers" — Maurice Taraday, Aaron Rosen, Max Joseph, Samuel Bierstock, Jacob Cohen and others. These entrepreneurs had yards on Palmer Avenue, Victoria Street, Madison Avenue and Strange Street, but their profession was often ridiculed.

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Things have turned full circle, as their once-upon-a-time "junk" trade has morphed into a trendier buzzword — recycling.