By Jim Hagarty
Stan and Ollie’s Variety and Gas Bar in Bryanston, near London, Ontario, Canada, was not named for comic actors Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as I had presumed when I drove by it one day years ago.
Instead, it was named for Stan and Ollie Girodat, the couple who owned it. I dropped in one night and asked the woman behind the counter the origin of the name and she told me. However, she had trouble remembering how to spell Girodat so she yelled out to a room at the back, “Hey Stan! How do you spell your last name?”
“With great difficulty,” he hollered back and came out to see who wanted to know. Apparently, I wasn’t the first to point out how the couple’s names match the given names of Laurel and Hardy. But he still got a chuckle whenever someone enquired about it.
And, also unlike Laurel and Hardy, the Girodats’ business was not a comedy of errors but a thriving rural store.
