It’s been a long, fulfilling 41 years for Steve Tsiliganos, better known as Mr. Hume the Ice Cream Man.
Steve has been a staple in Lower Hamilton since he bought his first ice cream truck in 1981.
Now the 73-year-old said he is handing over the cone to new owners and retiring.
Steve told CBC Hamilton that he asked his son Terry to announce his retirement on Facebook earlier this week.
Steve said he has received a flood of messages from people of all ages sharing their happy memories of getting Mr. Yum ice cream.
Terry said the response was “humbling”.
Terry Tsiliganos, Steve’s son, said some of his dad’s best customers were local dogs, like Mara pictured here looking for a pup cup. He said that when dogs familiar with Mr Hume heard the generator, they ran. (Submitted by Terry Tsiliganos)
“He was always trying to spread some cheer and some ice cream wherever he could,” he said.
Steve said he watched some of the children he served in the 1980s become parents and grandparents.
“They grew up with me. It’s like family.”
“Classic Immigrant Story”
Steve said he immigrated from Crete, Greece to Hamilton in 1973. He started working in Burlington making blades for a chain saw factory and later worked at International Harvester in Hamilton until 1985.
Steve bought his first ice cream truck, Snow Daddy, in 1981. He drove it around after work and on weekends.
Terry said he doesn’t know how his father managed to juggle a full-time job, the ice cream business and raising four children – but he did.
“It’s your classic immigrant story, isn’t it?” Terry said. “He worked a lot.”
Before owning the truck Mr. Yum, Tsiliganos owns a truck from the 1950s called Snow Daddy. (Submitted by Terry Tsiliganos)
Terry said much of his childhood was spent with his father in the ice cream truck, driving around town eating ice cream.
As he grew older, Terry began working for his father, which included managing a fleet of Mr. ice cream bikes. Yum.
“People ask me, ‘Why didn’t you take over the family business?’, and to be honest, that rattle, I still hear it in my nightmares. I heard it every day for years and years,” he said.
The ice cream truck was such a huge part of Terry’s childhood that he and his siblings were called the Yumlings.
“It was a nickname in the house. You wouldn’t say Dad, you’d call him Mr. Yum,” Terry said.
The truck Mr. Yum has been such an important part of the Tsiliganos family’s life that the Tsiliganos’ daughter is pictured here getting ice cream after her wedding in 1997. (Submitted by Terry Tsiliganos)
Steve said the most important thing to him in all his years of serving ice cream was making the kids happy.
One of the ways he did this was to ensure that children without money never felt left out.
“Don’t you have money? It’s all right,” he said, adding that he used his tips to offset the cost of the freebies he was handing out.
“I have children of my own and I understand.”
Steve will spend his retirement with friends
Terry said it took his father years to retire.
“We tried to get him to retire a couple of times and he was like, ‘What would I do?'” Terry said.
Steve said that running the ice cream truck is hard work, even if it doesn’t look like it.
“You get up in the morning, sometimes you work [until] 10, 11 at night,” he said. “Those are long hours. You have a lot of stress, you know?”
Ceairra Mercuri submitted this photo of her younger sister, Gracie, enjoying a spinning cone in 2018. (Submitted by Ceairra Mercuri)
Steve said he recently sold the ice cream truck Mr. Yum. The new owners are from Toronto and own several other trucks.
As part of the deal, Steve said, they’re allowed to keep the Mr. Yum name on the truck as long as they keep the business in Hamilton, “because everybody knows who Mr. Yum is.”
Steve said he has been trying to keep busy since his wife died five years ago, but is ready to devote more time to his interests and stop working.
He said he likes to fish and hunt. Steve said he plans to spend part of his retirement in northern Ontario and part of it tending to his family’s olive groves in Crete.
“I just need good company, good friends and that’s it.”
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