07/10/2025
Will that be one scoop or two?
SCOOPS OF NOSTALGIA by Mark McNeil
Stoney Creek Dairy and Jumbo Ice Cream are gone, but their legacies live on
As a teenager, John Michaluk, 82, worked part-time for several years at Jumbo Ice Cream, which operated on King Street East near Victoria Avenue from 1936 to 1968.
PHOTO: Here, John Michaluk is holding an ice cream scoop from the early years of the parlour for the Flashbacks story.
There's something magical about an ice cream cone on a summer day. Maybe it's the tasty seduction of frozen cream against a crisp crunch — or the challenge of keeping the bulbous crown from tumbling to the sidewalk.
Lick too slowly, and it melts down your arm. Too fast, and you're hit with brain freeze. It's captivating and delightful, yet so fleeting. One moment, the cone sits torch like, tall and proud in your hand. The next, you're left with only a gnarled, sticky napkin to remember it.
But sometimes a simple cone transcends wistful indulgence to become frozen in the mind forever. Two weeks ago, I savoured an unforgettable one at a place called Love's Ice Cream in Cumberland, B.C., about 100 kilometres north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. The first scoop was hard ice cream — “Lovely Lemon Square” was the flavour. Very creamy, with generous chunks of lemon loaf that tasted like something grandma would have made. On top, a soft swirl of wild blueberry was sculpted into a wisp of luscious blue.
The combination was exquisite, not only in taste but also in texture. The cone? Waffle, of course. Homemade, just like the frozen delight it held. But get this: A mini marshmallow was placed in the bottom to prevent leakage — and to offer one final crescendo of pleasure.
It got me thinking about ice cream memories in Hamilton, and how two beloved places from days gone by continue to be celebrated. They may have melted into history, but they have not been forgotten. In fact, each has its own kind of shrine today.
PHOTO: John Michaluk with an ice cream scoop and ice cream moulds from his collection of memorabilia from Jumbo Ice Cream.
One lives online — a page filled with reminiscences and photos celebrating Jumbo Ice Cream, which operated at 423 King St. E. near Victoria from 1936 to 1968.
The other is a tribute parlour honouring the legendary Stoney Creek Dairy, which lasted from 1929 to 2012. Open to the public on weekends, the nostalgic “Amica Stoney Creek Dairy” is part of the Amica retirement home, built on the same site where the dairy once stood — 135 King St. E. in Stoney Creek.
When Jumbo closed in August 1968, it was described in The Spectator as being “Hamilton's oldest and best-known ice cream parlour.” The owners, brothers Evan and Don McMaster, decided to retire from the business and no one stepped forward to take over.
They hired a lot of kids in those days. And one of them was John Michaluk.
“Ice cream was the op**te of the time — before real op**tes came in,” he says. And the place was often packed.
Michaluk, 82, worked there off and on from the mid1950s to the mid1960s while he was a student. He helped churn the frozen magic on the premises, “but we never knew the exact recipe — that was top secret.”
His main job was to scoop the finished product for customers, and he did a lot of that.
“We'd have eight cans of ice cream in front of us,” he says, motioning me to stand back so he can properly tell the story. “Chocolate would be here, vanilla next to it, maple walnut here, strawberry over there — and then the lesser flavours, the `children of the lesser God,' would be at the end.
“There's a certain amount of finesse involved. You had to roll the wrist. It's like playing guitar — there's technique to it,” he says, holding a scoop from Jumbo's early days that he keeps as a souvenir.
“And after a full Sunday of scooping — let me tell you, you'd be sweating, with sore arms. But it was fun. I mean, it really was fun.”
Michaluk — who played centre and linebacker for the Hamilton Tiger Cats from 1966 to 1969 before moving into the banking industry — asked Stelco historian Stephen Lechniak to create the “Jumbo Ice Cream Memories” page as an offshoot of other Hamilton nostalgia pages he hosts.
The page has 211 members, and a couple of times a year, former employees and customers get together at face-to-face reunions they call “Jumbo Jerks and Friends.” This Thanksgiving will be their 15th annual reunion.
Stoney Creek Dairy was founded by George Dawson in 1929 and began as a milk delivery business. By the early 1940s, the company moved into making ice cream and in 1942 opened a dairy bar, which became a hub for the community.
“I vividly recall the dairy,” says Greg Armstrong, the president of the Stoney Creek Historical Society. “It used to be pretty packed on weekends; the traffic was pretty bad.”
“My first date with my wife involved going there, actually.” It was 1965, and they stopped there after going to a movie.
The Dawson family sold the business in 1996 to a firm called Delicious Alternative Desserts Ltd. with plans to turn the family business into an ice cream empire. But by 2002, the company was broke. A succession of other owners followed, with Stoney Creek Dairy serving its last ice cream cone in September 2012.
In 2016, the building was demolished. Out of the rubble came the Amica Stoney Creek retirement home, which houses more than 170 seniors. The following year, they decided to build an ice cream parlour and make it a tribute to the Stoney Creek Dairy, a company that was very familiar to most residents.
“All the photos and memorabilia you see on the walls came from the Dawson family. They passed it along to us, and they were even at the grand opening, which was lovely,” says Lesley Galbraith, Amica's director of sales and marketing.
Today, you'll find historical photographs, newspaper clippings, milk cans, old baseball uniforms and a yellow tray that famously says, “Stolen from Stoney Creek Dairy Bar.”
“When people come to tour Amica and I mention the ice cream parlour, they get so excited. Everyone has a memory: coming here on Sundays with the family, a first date, grabbing a cone.”
These days, the frozen fare comes from Central Smith Creamery near Peterborough, operating since 1896. There are usually 10 flavours. Residents selected the brand themselves after taste tests.
The parlour at 135 King St. E. in Stoney Creek is open on weekends from 1 to 7 p.m. until Labour Day. (Amica residents can go seven days per week.) The Saturday I visited, I went with “Strawberries 'n' Cream” — billed as the “next best thing to a bowl of fresh berries and cream.”
It was lovely. Not as adventurous as Love's, and not quite as satisfying as Stoney Creek Dairy. I never had the pleasure of trying Jumbo.
But then again, things always taste better in your memory.
