By Rachel Vaarkamp
The Haldimand Press
HAGERSVILLE—On January 25, 2019 the Hagersville Auction Centre celebrated 50 years of being in Hagersville. Owned by Wilbert River Slack, known to many as Webb, this family-run operation has seen a lot of change over the last five decades.
In 1968 another Hagersville livestock sale, located in what is now the Market Square, closed permanently. Webb’s grandfather, Wilbert Roy Slack, and a local auctioneer, Sanford “Sandy” Shantz, saw the need for this type of sale to continue, so they got a Community Auction Sale licence from the Ontario government and held their first sale on the last Friday of January 1969. The centre is in the same location as when it began, on the corner of Hwy. 6 and First Line. Webb and his father, Rivers Slack, partnered together to grow the sale into a full-time business, and now their biggest sale of the year can see well over 400 people attending from across Ontario and beyond.
