NORTH BAY — Longtime downtown business owner Ralph Diegal has died. He was 97, and with his wife Pat was the owner of Deegan's Shoes on Main St. West.
See: Ralph Diegel reminisces at 90th birthday celebration
And: 133-year-old North Bay shoe business ending to focus on antiques
And: North Bay home to oldest independent shoe retailer
And: City's oldest business celebrates by issuing coin
At 17 he graduated high school and prepared for post-secondary education, but Ralph lived in a different time when the world was at war and Allied troops pushed the European front on their way to Berlin to end the Second World War. When he was 17, he enlisted.
After three years, fresh from the Second World War, Ralph worked for Price Signs in Sudbury for a few months before being laid off in the winter. Then his uncle, George Deegan, offered him a job for the holiday season of 1946.
For 78 years, Ralph worked at the store, eventually becoming the owner. In 2014, he and his wife Pat Kenzie-Diegel celebrated the store’s 125th anniversary.
“I’ve been incredibly lucky in life,” he told BayToday on his 90th birthday.
Read Ralph's obituary here.
Small Town Times' Dave Dale and Nestor Prisco sat down to chat with 'Mr. Downtown last year, at Antiques at Deegan's.
"We talked about scouts, his youth growing up in Ferris, and Camp Tillicum," said Dale.
He owned Canada's longest-running shoe store (133 years for Deegan's Shoes, recently refocused to offer antiques rather than focus on shoes).
BayToday will update this story.
