VIRGINIA — Not everybody in northern Minnesota remembers the department store holiday displays that were an annual attraction for Christmas shoppers in downtown Minneapolis from 1963-2016.
Animatronic figures enacting seasonal stories filled the eighth-floor auditorium in the store operating as Dayton's (1963-2001), Marshall Field's (2001-2006) and finally Macy's (2006-2017).
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"My dad did shopping, the candy shows and gift shows," remembered Pamela Canelake Matson. "We made a couple annual trips, so we'd shop at Dayton's, and it was a big deal to go down there."
Matson and her twin sister, Patricia Canelake, spoke with a reporter one morning last month while standing in their father's candy shop — a business founded in Virginia in 1905 by their grandfather, Gust Canelake, and his brothers. Today, Canelake's Candies is owned and operated by third and fourth generations of the Canelake family, which also operates Great! Lakes Candy Kitchen in Knife River.
Decades after those Minneapolis road trips, some of the figures from the Dayton's displays have come to Virginia, where Santa Claus and other characters are in merry motion in the candy store's display windows.
John Canelake, the sisters' late father, would have approved. "My dad was always brainstorming and decorating and making new signs" for the store's front windows, remembered Patricia Canelake.
"He was very proud of the Easter display," added Pamela Canelake Matson. "He had a car that was animated, with a bunny, and its wheels would roll."
Now, Santa's sleigh has pride of place, rocking back and forth as St. Nick waves from the driver's seat. The motor that creates the rocking motion survives in working order from the sled's original department store duty. The fact that Santa waves, and that a nearby figure bends to open a giant box of Canelake's candy, is thanks to the work of Bill Ewald.
"It sounds like the folks of the town, whether they've been through Dayton's or not, are just enjoying seeing these magical Christmas characters," said Ewald, speaking by phone from his home in Minnetrista. "Young at heart or old at heart, people are thrilled."
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To Ewald's knowledge, he has the largest private collection of figures formerly displayed at Dayton's — including some of the figures from mid-1960s displays based on the stories of Charles Dickens. Those characters survived because they were displayed, immobile, at the original location of the Guthrie Theater.
"They were meant to be destroyed after the show if they were licensed," explained Ewald. That's why the characters from Dayton's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (1998) and "Harry Potter" (2000) shows are long gone. Even so, dozens — possibly hundreds — of the figures do still exist, along with many props and other decorations from the decades of department store displays.
Some are preserved in the collection of the Minnesota Historical Society, while some belong to the Hennepin Theatre Trust. Some are back in downtown Minneapolis as part of the Dayton's Project, an attempt to leverage the legacy brand for a marketplace of local merchants. Some are even on display in Bentleyville.
"We have had three semi loads of (decorations), or more, all donated to us when Macy's closed" in 2017, wrote Bentleyville Tour of Lights founder Nathan Bentley in an email to the News Tribune. That included "Santa chairs, carts, etc." along with figures that can be seen annually rotating in display cases at the Duluth harborside light show.
How did the Canelake's figures make it to the Range? Patricia Canelake credited her sister's "obsession with Dayton's figures," causing Pamela Canelake Matson to laugh in acknowledgment.
"We didn't know what we were going to do with them," said Matson, explaining that in 2017, the sisters paid several hundred dollars at auction for a carful of figures. When the Canelake siblings brought the Virginia candy store, which their father had sold, back into the family the following year, they started working to restore the figures from their poor condition to display quality.
Patricia Canelake, a professional artist who's responsible for the Bear Trail attraction at the Knife River store, took on the task of repainting the figures' faces. Pamela Canelake Matson used papier-mache to reconstruct elements including a reindeer head, using driftwood for antlers to lighten the figure's load.
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She also reached out to Ewald, who had become adept at restoring the department store figures to motion. The sisters ended up trading a few characters to Ewald in exchange for his work installing new motors in others. The Christmas figures are now installed at Canelake's — but to avoid overtaxing the motors, the characters "rest" overnight and for a couple midafternoon hours each day.
"We took a trip up to Canelake's to pick up these pieces and see that fascinating store," Ewald said. "It's just so neat."
The electric-powered displays are in keeping with the store's vintage vibe, harking back to an era when the Canelake's soda fountain (still in operation) was a mainstay for local kids and Walt Disney was on television extolling the wonders of animatronics.
The postwar world saw an explosion of commercial culture around the Christmas holiday, and the Dayton's displays were part of that. Charlie Brown, in his iconic 1965 special, decried the era's high-voltage holiday decorations, but kids like the Canelake sisters were enchanted.
"Everybody that ever went there remembers the Dayton's eighth-floor Christmas displays," said Patricia Canelake. "We always loved art, and my parents loved art, so the figurative nature and artistic nature just connected."
The store's display theme, which changed annually for decades, ultimately settled into a single unchanging narrative — "A Day in the Life of an Elf" — for the last several years of its existence after Dayton's became Macy's. By the time the dolls were piled into the Canelakes' Honda Element, it wasn't entirely clear what characters many of the figures were meant to represent.
The sisters believe that one of their figures was Wendy from "Peter Pan." Instead of looking down with astonishment as she flies over London, the figure now gapes delightedly at a Canelake's sign being flourished by another figure.
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Virginia shoppers have had a similar reaction. One customer, leaving the store as the Canelake sisters spoke with a reporter, complimented the figures and stopped to snap a photo.
"The kids are definitely looking at it, and the adults," said Matson. "We saw one car pull up to each window. (The driver) looked at the display, and then moved the car a little bit and then moved on to the next one."
In downtown Virginia, Canelake's Candies is not alone in sprucing up for the season. "Different stores are taking the effort to really decorate," said Patricia Canelake. Holiday decorations hang over Chestnut Street, and festive music fills the air.
"I like," Canelake continued, "the old-fashioned idea of people taking their downtown holiday walk and window shopping."
The Trust Project
