Mike Loftus grew playing Pinball in Ottawa. Rob Illuiri played the same arcade games in the suburbs of northern Montreal.
Decades later, the two were found through their passion shared by the collection and restoration of Pinball machines and formed Pinball doctors, a repair service. His last collaboration is the Pinball Canadian Museum in Alfred, Ontario.
It is a place to show its collection of more than 70 pinball machines and arcade games of the 70s and 80s, all meticulously restored and in operation.
“You can touch them, feel them [and] He plays, “said Loftus, 59.” All are marked, ascended and play better than new. “
For Loftus, machines are a portal of another time before the Xbox.
“It is nostalgia, from a simpler moment in which things were more tangible,” he explained. “You had to leave and … play the games together in person. It’s about returning to that experience.”
Alfred is a small community 70 kilometers east of Ottawa already 120 kilometers west of Montreal. Before the construction of highway 417 in the mid -70s, the “old” 17 highway that forms the main street of Alfred was the main route that linked those main cities.
The motels and restaurants that attend to interprovincial travelers were aligned on the road, but most vanished when the traffic moved to the new road. Among those closed businesses was a road restaurant called Cardin Bar-BQ, which closed around 1980, according to Illuiri.
The old restaurant, with a Chevron-style modernist ceiling, remained empty for 38 years until Illuiri bought it and began the process, decelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, to renew and restore it.
Much of the building was preserved as a time capsule of the 1970s, completed with glass glass windows, brown striped carpet, recreation -style wooden panels and textured plaster walls.
“It’s not just about the reproduction of 70,” Loftus was excited. “This is real, real, vintage from the 70s to the end. It looks, smells, knows to the 70s. They are the 70s.”
Arcade fans considered that it was a perfect setting for a Pinball Museum to celebrate the golden era of the game, not to mention their own celery.
“I had his hair there, a kind of printed shirt and mirror glasses, considerably different from what I see at this time,” said Loftus, whose gray hair is now close.
I have memories of my friends I used to play in the past. It is as if they were here with me.– Rob Illuiri
Illuiri, 57, also remembered his Pinball game days in the suburbs of Montreal, when he wore concert t -shirts and listened to Black Sabbath, Kiss and Deep Purple. Now, surrounded by some of those same machines, it is flooded with nostalgia.
“I feel like a child. I feel that I am back in time,” said Illuiri, who still uses his hair a lot. “I have memories of my friends I used to play in the past. It’s as if they were here with me. Good times, when life was easy.”
Nor did you need a lot of money, he recalled. “We are going to … go to the game room and try to stretch the dollar as much as we can.”
Loftus said they are trying to relive the feeling of that simpler moment.
“We hope to create a time portal in the mid -70s,” he said. “Each machine basically tells a story, something about how it felt at that time.”
In addition to Pinball machines, its collection includes classic arcade games such as asteroids.
“I remember playing it in Skateway Roller Disc on the west of Ottawa,” Loftus said. “He came out at the same time as Star WarsThen you must be just flying through the field of asteroids. “
The Pinball Canadian Museum opens on Saturday at 4938 County Road 17. Additional information can be found here.
