what does rogers media, wave internet,vision.com, compucenter ( a company that no longer exists at upper canada mall ) , Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr Freeze from batman and my 2 full size posters have in common.
How about a piece of Canadian and American nostalgia.
You see, back in 1997 I was looking for a laptop at Upper Canada Mall, in Newmarket Ontario. The place was called Compucenter. (It was located on the 1st floor, where now I believe is a games store today.)
I ended up not buying the Laptop that day, but instead was given something by one of the sales guys ( Joel ), I think it was in hopes that i would return and buy the $7,000.00 piece of technology. What did he give me ? 2 full size posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Big deal right ? thats what I thought. I took them home, buryed them away, and forgot all about them. Compucenter went out of business and I never bought a lap top again.
Since then though, Alot of historical things have taken place after I recieved these posters. 1st of all, I found out that rogers cable was first introduced in Newmarket, ontario, and that only 4 of these posters were ever made for the new release of the new cable service. I have 2 of them. I don't know where the other 2 ever wound up. Apparently it cost $1000.00 for each poster, primarily because of the full color on both sides, and the quality of paper and and coroplast used in the middle to make them sturdy. These posters were used for the front doors of Compucenters storefront.
After the release of Rogers Cable, the posters were stored away, Until I came around to buy that over priced laptop. What's interesting though is the poster does not say Rogers cable, But "Rogers Wave". After some further investigation on wayback machine I found that
November 12, 1996
Cable industry's "vision.com" consortium offered a national high-speed Internet access as first initiative.
Participating in the Toronto announcement were Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco/Cablenet and Western Co-Axial. Other WAVE partners rolling-out the service neighbourhood by neighbourhood included Cable Regina, Delta Cable, Access Cable Television, Videon CableSystems and Vidéotron who announced their services in Edmonton.
Together the WAVE participants made up 80 per cent of the total cable subscribers in Canada.
Representing vision.com at the launch were Ted Rogers (Rogers), Jim Shaw, Jr. (Shaw), Louis Audet (Cogeco/Cablenet) and John Levy (Western Co-Axial).
Richard Stursberg, President of vision.com hosted the event.
Why am I telling you this ? Well if you look at the poster you're under the impression "Rogers Wave" is the same company. But it's not. Wave is a seperate company altogether, located in Orlando Florida. which did and still does produce film,video, audio for Television, Corporate presentations, the Internet and CD-roms.
Which brings me to my next point.
Batman was released June 20 1997.
On June 10th. 1997 Bill gates invested $US 1 billion to purchase 11.5 per cent of Comcast Corp., the fourth largest cable company in the U.S .throwing his support behind cables high-speed Internet access.
Big deal right ? Well here's my question. If you look at Mr. Freeze's Outfit, and my poster, you will see a major difference in outfits. Did "Wave" alter Mr.freeze's outfit as
a marketing tool for positioning the newly released cable high speed ? After all Wave is a marketing company ?
Was Mr Schwarzenegger aware of this marketing campaign used by Rogers ? Or was this a quick picture alteration used for the soul purpose of advertising to local Newmarket residences?
Whatever the case Maybe, I just thought I would share with the youtube viewer a little piece of Canadian / American nostolgia. and note the irony of this posters current place in my shed. The Statement "The future Isn't waiting" holds true.
Think about it. Ted Rogers is dead, Mr Freeze is now the governor of California, Bill gates has retired And I still don't have a laptop. The future has come and gone.
And as the advertisment said at the begining, Makes me wonder "Is tommorow still going to be amazing"...??
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New Rogers Cable offerby Luftballoons11,875 views
lol, I cant believe you took all this time to make this video.
I am from Newmarket Ontario (i moved a year ago to BC) but i lived in newmarket 20 years on john bowser cres which is right beside upper canada mall.
I miss compucentre and the good ol days of newmarket.
legends31 3 years ago