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Clayton couple retires after 50 years

Iconic Clayton General Store, one of the first shops in Surrey, will have new owners.
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Arlene and Lloyd Skiba first bought the gas station on the corner of Fraser Highway in 1969. Since then

It was moving day at the old Husky gas station on the corner of Fraser Highway and 184 Street.

The shelves of candy and snack food were woefully bare. One employee was pulling the stickers off packs of gum. The coffee machine had two out-of-order signs taped to its front, and the case for lottery tickets was empty.

But you could still find the owners, Arlene and Lloyd Skiba, in the back room.

“Are you sad?” Arlene asked Lloyd, a note of surprise in her voice.

“No. I’m thinking about that what’s-his-name there,” Lloyd said from behind his desk. “He said he’s going to let Yuen pay for gas and now he took off on me. I can’t order—I’m not going to pay for it because it’s not ours. But I can’t cancel a load once it’s coming.”

She turned away from him. “Always business. You know what I mean?”

The Skibas bought the gas station in 1969, moving there from Garson, Manitoba. As a husband and wife entrepreneurial team, they managed the business for 48 years. Their daughter and son-in-law, Michelle and Terry Klimchuk, also dedicated their time to the business for more than a decade. But now the Skibas will say farewell to that time of their lives.

“It’s getting too much,” Arlene said. “We have acreage in Langley, and we kind of want to just enjoy it and be there.”

This comes after a lifetime of owning and managing businesses.

Lloyd first started in business when he was 17, working in his parents’ repair shop. Arlene worked in her parents’ grocery store. As adults, they owned a gas station in Manitoba—and Lloyd also operated a mechanic shop and towing company.

With his towing company, Lloyd would be outside in the blowing snow and freezing temperatures, struggling to get vehicles out of snowdrifts and ditches. It was cold, hard work—one both of them were happy to change.

When Arlene and Lloyd went on their Hawaii honeymoon in 1966, the opportunity for change arrived.

Arlene and Lloyd Skiba in their younger years. Contributed

“We had a stopover in Vancouver here. And the weather was beautiful,” she laughed. “We went to Stanley Park and people were out in the park enjoying the sunshine. And the day we got married in Manitoba there was still a little bit of snow on the ground.

“So we says ‘Hey, that’s the place to move to.’”

After a bit of searching, they found the old full-service Chevron on the corner of Fraser Highway. In 1969, they bought it and moved to Clayton.

At first, Lloyd operated his repair shop out of the main building of the gas station. It was noisy, Arlene remembered. The smell of grease permeated the building.

“I had just a little bit of office just like this here,” Arlene looked around the small back room. “I had a window so I could see the automotive repairs being done through my window, and I did some of the office work.”

The area around the gas station, at that time, was all farmland. Down the road there was a mink farm; Arlene remembered chicken farms in the area. Lloyd had to use his tow truck—a business he held on the side of the mechanic shop and gas station—to pull a horse out of a well.

But right beside the gas station, there was the historic Clayton General Store.

The store, and the house it was located in, had been icons in the Clayton area for years. In 1925, Frank Calkins built the Calkins House and Store. It was one of the earliest stores in the area—and in 1926, it became one of the few places to get gas.

The Calkins General Store, built in 1925, was one of the earliest stores to set up shop in Surrey. City of Surrey

In the early ’80s, the Skibas bought the Clayton General Store, and became the owners of both the community gas station and the small grocery store on the main floor of the heritage house.

Why did they buy the heritage house in the first place?

“Because my husband thought—” she interrupted herself with a laugh, “more property and it was better for—”

“And the property was awfully small,” he said.

“So we wanted to add,” she finished.

In the late 90s, Lloyd quit his automotive repair business, and the Skibas moved the grocery section of the heritage house over to the gas station, which was then a three-bay Esso.

The Skibas leased out the gas station and the heritage house on and off in the latter part of their ownership. It wasn’t always easy—after one renter let the business run down, Lloyd and Arlene had to leave their Langley acreage and fledgling nursery farm and get back into the business—but it was definitely memorable.

One of the most memorable moments happened in the ‘80s.

“I know what I’m thinking.” Arlene looked at Lloyd meaningfully.

“What?”

“Remember when Fred went out to the back, and he saw this van parked on our parking lot? And he comes running back into the gas station—you know what story I’m going to tell?” Arlene asked. “He comes running back in to say, ‘There’s a man sitting in this van, and he’s not moving.’”

“Yeah, okay,” said Lloyd.

“Do you remember that?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said.

“So the guys went out to see what he’s talking about,” Arlene paused for effect. “And it was a mannequin.”

They both laughed.

It turned out a regular customer had parked his van beside the gas station and left a mannequin in the seat.

“He would come back and he would laugh about that.” Arlene chuckled. “I think that was funny.”

The luckless Fred of the mannequin story was Fred Bakewell, an employee for Lloyd and Arlene. He rented the top half of the heritage house after the Skibas bought it, and he worked at the gas station with them for many years.

That story highlighted the thing the Skibas will miss most about their business: the people.

“They’re not only customers, but they’re sort of like friends as well,” she said. “We have a real friendship with some of those people. That’s what we’ll miss the most. Not the work so much.”

A lot of changes have come into the Clayton area since Lloyd and Arlene moved here. The farms that once filled the countryside have been replaced with townhouses. The hill into Clayton used to be dotted with lights here and there, “now,” Arlene said, “the whole hill is lit up.”

The gas station on the corner of Fraser Highway and 184th Street is still there, grown up and branched out a little since the 1969. But Lloyd and Arlene won’t be.

Maybe you’ll find them on the Langley acreage, tending trees. Maybe you’ll find them visiting their son in Quebec. Or maybe you’ll find them on a plane to Hawaii, reliving their honeymoon from so many years ago.

But if you look for them in the back room of the Husky station, don’t be surprised when someone else is sitting in their chairs.