The happiest place in Halifax Regional Municipality has closed
Posted Jan 7, 2020 05:09:00 PM.
The happiest place in Halifax Regional Municipality has closed.
Debbie Power ran the Happy Face Museum from a room above her garage at 22 Wentworth Street in Dartmouth.
Inside, visitors were greeted by a bright yellow smile on thousands of objects ranging from clocks, to curtains, posters, nightlights, toys and waterbottles.
Power died in October, leaving her collection of keepsakes to her daughter, Tammy Hubley.
“I got great joy just seeing how [people] reacted to it, and it became something I really enjoyed and loved too,” Hubley told NEWS 95.7's The Sheldon MacLeod Show. “I really wanted to show it off to people I knew, I wanted them to see it.”
“It was heartbreaking to dismantle it.”
Hubley lives along the South Shore in Pleasantville. She isn't able to keep the museum running in Dartmouth and isn't sure it's feasible to relocate it closer to her home.
“What do you do with it all, it's a lot of stuff and I have to work,” she said. “It's a matter of trying to sort it all … it's a big collection.”
When her mother told her she was planning to open the museum, Hubley's response was, “You're going to do what?”
“I didn't quite understand, I couldn't figure out what it was,” she explained. “When they built the garage, it took her a while to sort things out. She had her collectible side of toys and dolls, but the biggest thing was the happy faces.”
Admission was free and Power soon became an icon around Dartmouth, known at Mrs. Happy Face.
“It was the joy she had inside that was very infectious to everybody,” said Hubley. “She always had a smile, she saw the good in everybody and she was always about making people happy.”
A brightly painted buoy adorned with a happy face caught the attention of passersby on Wentworth Street. Inspirational quotes were painted on the steps as visitors climbed up to the display, and people were asked to leave their happy thoughts before they left.
“Anybody who went in there that wasn't smiling, when they left they were really happy,” said Hubley. “It was contagious.”
