How a stowaway gave birth to a tailor shop that's still going 60 years later

From left, Mike, Tony Jr., and Theresa at Tony's Tailor Shop on Freshwater Road. Mike is working on a prom gown. 'I was gonna tell you a tailoring joke but I ran out of material,' he says. (Susan Flanagan)

It all started when a Portuguese teenager stowed away on a schooner from Porto in 1920.

Antonio da Silva, 13, left home and ended up in Harbour Buffet on Newfoundland's south coast, where he worked on coastal boats with the Newfoundland Railway. He married Mary Slaney from St. Lawrence and the couple later moved to St. John's, where the couple opened a boarding house that catered to the sailors of the Portuguese White Fleet.

Somewhere along the line for Antonio and Mary, the family name became Silver. They raised seven children, including Tony, born in 1932, who would become well-known in St. John's as "Tony the Tailor" — and whose shop is marking its 60th year of business in 2024.

Tony Silver was a teenager when he started running errands for clothing maker William L. Chafe in the late 1940s.

At the time, Chafe made police, firefighter and penitentiary uniforms, says Tony's son Mike, who alongside his older brother, Tony Jr., is a constant fixture in their father's shop today.

"Later, Dad was a tailor on staff until they started to bring in made-to-measure suits from the mainland. After that, the demand for suits dropped off, but there was a big call for alterations. Dad recognized the opportunity and branched out on his own."

Some of the Silver family: Tony Jr., Theresa, Tony Sr., Rose and Mike Silver at Tony's Tailor Shop circa 2010. (Silver family archives)

That was 1964, when Tony Sr. began his own tailoring business in his mother's backroom on Hutching Street in St. John's. Tony later married Mercedes Lake and had eleven children. Tony Jr. was followed by six girls — Donna, Bobbi, Jackie, Rose, Theresa and Michelle — and then four boys: Shawn, Mike, Pat and Tom.

Most of the children worked in the shop after school and on weekends. Tony Sr. died in 2010, and three of his children are carrying on his legacy.

"I got married in the summer of 1975 and when I came back from my honeymoon, I was supposed to start trades school for mechanics, but ended up coming to work full time for Dad," says Tony Silver Jr., who turned 69 in February.

"And I've been working here full-time since 1987," says Mike Silver, turning away from the fuchsia prom dress he's transforming when he's not greeting customers.

If you do the math, that's 49 years for Tony and 37 for Mike. Not many can say they've been at the same workplace that long. Then again, not many businesses have lasted 60 years.

But Tony's Tailor Shop on Freshwater Road is still going strong, hour after hour, five days a week. In the back work three seamstresses: Michelle Lowe, Cheryl Cook and Theresa Antle. Theresa is Mike and Tony Jr.'s sister, who worked full time at the shop from 1980 to 1991 and then returned to sew in the mornings after she retired from her job as supervisor of acquisitions at the QEII library at Memorial University.

Tony Jr., Theresa and Mike on the steps of Tony's Tailor Shop, the business founded by their father 60 years ago. on Freshwater Road; Photo by Susan Flanagan (Susan Flanagan)

On a warm Tuesday afternoon in April, the front door is propped open, and every two to three minutes, someone is dropping off or picking up. An Air Canada pilot needs his pants taken in. Two teen girls, one cradling a prom dress, are shown to the dressing room. An 82-year-old woman pops in and Mike greets her by name while Tony Jr. measures the instep of a man in his 30s who has just passed him a bag of trousers.

"Can you make them all into 32s?" the man asks. Tony Jr. checks the size: 33. Measures the customer's inseam: 31.

"No problem. Friday," he says.

Mike passes another woman a receipt and answers the phone.

"That's something I can do within a day or so," he says to the person on the other end of the line.

Before the phone is out of his hand, he's handing a bag to yet another customer without having to ask what he's come to pick up.

"That'll be $13, Mr. Crane," he says.

Next in is a firefighter picking up gear for the station. He's followed by a man picking up a mended supportive brace. Another, a priest's vestment.

The clients are as varied as the items to be repaired.

"We've sewn the A&W Root Bear and we've fixed Buddy the Puffin's feet I don't know how many times," says Tony Jr. "This week we've got a run on stuffed toys." He holds up a clear plastic bag filled with colourful animals.

"We once fit a stripper for a human-size stocking she had to come out of," says Mike with a laughs. He and his siblings are often laughing, a sure sign they enjoy their work — as did their father.

Tony Silver Sr. repairs the window of his shop on Duckworth Street in 1973. After starting his business in his parents' home, Silver rented a place on New Gower Street, at the bottom of Springdale Street on the site of what is now the Hilton Garden Hotel. Then it was on to 337 Duckworth in the Maunder Building until 1977, when he bought the building at 478 Water St. Silver moved to the current location on Freshwater Road in December 1979 and began business the following month. (Duane Starcher/Memorial University Art Gallery)

The only time the shop closed down was from 1971-73 when Tony Sr. needed heart surgery.

"Dad had valve problems and couldn't get them repaired here," says Mike. "He went away for his heart operation two weeks after our youngest brother was born. He had to go to Toronto and leave mother with 11 kids between the age of zero and 19. We ate lots of toutons."

Other than when they had to close due to their father's health, the shop has rarely been closed. The closest Tony's children have come to retiring was when the shop had to close down at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then the demand for masks was so high they had to hire extra staff to make them.

"We did close the day Dad died and had the hearse pull up in front of the store," says Tony Jr.

But then Tony the Tailor's Shop was right back at it.

"I never say I don't want to go to work," says Mike. "I don't think Dad did either. And he worked till he was 78. He set a high bar."