B.C. man fills office with an expansive collection of Orange Crush memorabilia

VICTORIA, B.C. — John Threlfall points to a collage on his office door. “So, this is my smallest collection,” he says. It displays 76 misspellings of his last name that he cut from correspondence, including letters and faxes. He smiles at examples such as Thrillfall, Treefall and Truffle, saying he gets excited whenever a new one arrives.

His first collection began when his parents took him antiquing as a boy. He remembers finding antique stores boring, so his parents told him to look for something that interested him. He chose an old Orange Crush bottle because it was the only pop he drank as a child. He thought it was cool enough that, over time, he covered his high-school bedroom with Crush items he happened upon. He recalls spotting dresses, magazines and signs while browsing, then getting excited when he found an old Orange Crush item he did not have. He says collecting is about discovery, not shopping, and none of his pieces were bought online.

Beyond the name misspellings and small displays of Batman, James Bond and B.C. history, Threlfall’s office now holds more than 100 pieces of Orange Crush memorabilia. He picks up a bottle and says it was bottled in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1941: “So, this would have been what they were drinking when Pearl Harbour happened.” His collection also includes old advertisements, clothing and assorted memorabilia. An Orange Crush visor has a solar-powered AM sports radio with an attached earpiece. “So, you could listen to the game,” he says, smiling, “while you had your Orange Crush hat on.”

The collection resembles a pop-culture museum exhibit, with Crush artifacts spanning roughly a century, from the 1890s to the 1990s. It has also become an effective icebreaker when Threlfall meets people in his office. By the time they finish talking about the collection and get to the reason for their visit, he says, they are already comfortable with him.

The items also work as a kind of time machine, taking him back to drinking ice-cold Crush as a child. He recalls the sound of taking a bottle from a machine, the dew on it and the taste as it went down his throat. Orange Crush also gave him an early taste of independence: he could take a dime, walk to the corner store and buy a bottle on his own.

Asked what his younger self would think of the person he grew up to be, Threlfall laughs and says, “He’d think, ‘Oh my God! Are you still collecting Orange Crush?’” His younger self could not have imagined that, alongside mass-produced merchandise, the collection would include a painting of an Orange Crush can by a university student he worked with, and children’s colouring addressed to the “Dada” he would become. He points to a picture of a baby sitting in a box beside a painting of Crushy, the old Orange Crush mascot. “This is my [now] 24-year-old son when he was born,” he says.

“Everything tells a story,” Threlfall says. His collection began with his parents and grew as he raised his own family. “Then [you can ask] how does that story intersect with your story?”

People have mistaken his name for Trenholme, Threlvel or even “The Honourable Associate Chief Judge Threlfall.” But he can always look back at his Crush collection and appreciate who he has been.