By Jamie Bradburn

Source: The Mail and Empire, June 30, 1900.

Based on the illustration, is it really the bride’s happiness that’s at stake or is it the cook in the background’s satisfaction with the proper food preparation equipment? Or is the artist depicting the bride having a vision of her happy homemaking, which shows her as someone who remains cool and relaxed after her Happy Thought got her through the third meal of the day (and the rolling pin maintained discipline in the house)? Could we be looking at two neighbours exchanging knowing glances at each other, possibly because they bought Happy Thoughts before everyone else on the block?
Richard Bigley went into the stove business in 1875, a year before the building on Queen Street East that still bears his name was completed. He built his reputation as the local distributor of the Happy Thought stove and gradually expanded his business into distributing furnaces across the province. He retired in the mid-1920s due to ill health and spent his remaining years living in Parkdale. When he died in 1933, the headline on his obituary identified him as a “noted stove man.” Declared a heritage property in 1973, the Richard Bigley Building was converted to lofts as the twentieth century drew to a close.
Additional material from the June 2, 1933 edition of the Toronto Star.