Mike Loftus grew up playing pinball in Ottawa. Rob Illuiri played the same arcade games in the northern suburbs of Montreal.
Decades later, the two met through their shared passion for collecting and refurbishing pinball machines and formed Pinball Medics, a repair service. Their latest collaboration is the Canadian Pinball Museum in Alfred, Ont.
It’s a place to display their collection of more than 70 pinball machines and arcade games from the 1970s and ’80s, all meticulously refurbished and in working order.
“You get to touch them, feel them [and] play them,” said Loftus, 59. “They’re all dialled in, souped-up and play better than new.”
For Loftus, the machines are a portal back to another time before the Xbox.
“It’s nostalgia, from a simpler time when things were more tangible,” he explained. “You had to actually go out and … play the games together in person. It’s all about getting back to that experience.”
Alfred is a small community 70 kilometres east of Ottawa and 120 kilometres west of Montreal. Prior to the construction of Highway 417 in the mid-70s, the “old” Highway 17 that forms Alfred’s main street was the main route linking those major cities.
Motels and restaurants catering to interprovincial travellers lined the road, but most faded away when traffic moved to the new highway. Among those shuttered businesses was a roadside diner called Cardin Bar-B-Q, which closed around 1980, according to Illuiri.
The former restaurant, with a modernist chevron-style roof, remained empty for 38 years until Illuiri bought it and began the process — slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic — of renovating and restoring it.
Much of the building was preserved like a 1970s time capsule, complete with stained glass transom windows, brown striped carpet, rec-room-style wood panelling and textured plaster walls.
“It’s not just reproduction ’70s,” Loftus enthused. “This is actual, real, vintage ’70s all the way. It looks, smells, tastes like the ’70s. It is the ’70s.”
The arcade aficionados considered it a perfect setting for a pinball museum to celebrate the game’s golden era — not to mention their own heydays.
“I had hair down to there, some kind of freaky printed shirt and mirrored glasses — considerably different than I look right now,” said Loftus, whose greying hair is now close-cut.
I have memories of my buddies I used to play with back in the day. It’s like they’re here with me.– Rob Illuiri
Illuiri, 57, also recalled his pinball-playing days in suburban Montreal, when he wore concert T-shirts and listened to Black Sabbath, Kiss and Deep Purple. Now, surrounded by some of those same machines, he’s awash in nostalgia.
“I feel like a kid. I feel like I’m back in time,” said Illuiri, who still wears his hair long. “I have memories of my buddies I used to play with back in the day. It’s like they’re here with me. Good times, when life was easy.”
Nor did you need much money, he recalled. “We’d … go to the arcade and try to stretch the dollar as much as we can.”
Loftus said they’re trying to revive the feeling of that simpler time.
“We’re hoping to create a time portal back to the mid-70s,” he said. “Every machine basically tells a story, something about what it felt like at that time.”
Besides the pinball machines, their collection includes such classic arcade games as Asteroids.
“I remember playing it at Skateway Roller Disco in the west end of Ottawa,” said Loftus. “It came out around the same time as Star Wars, so you got to be Han Solo flying through the asteroid field.”
The Canadian Pinball Museum opens Saturday at 4938 County Road 17. Additional information can be found here.
