Today saw the 50th anniversary of Western Bearing and Auto Parts celebrated at their Saskatchewan Avenue location.

The business was launched by Ian Borland in 1966, and to mark the occasion, customers and staff were treated to lunch, including cake. Ian Borland was part of the event, and admits he never thought about something like this 50 years ago.

"I just turned around and wanted to be a service to the public, and be able to supply whatever they need. And they were asking for, I knew there wasn't any in town, so that's what I put in stock. And I built it from there, and that was my aim -- to look after the community as best I could."

Ian's son Doug Borland has been managing the business for about seven years, and calls the 50 years a substantial milestone, adding achieving it is difficult.

"A lot of companies don't make it that long. So it's a good reason for us to celebrate that we've made it this far, and we're still going -- no signs of quitting. You get pretty caught up in the day-to-day, but every once and a while it's nice to sit back and reflect a little bit on what got you here."

Borland stresses they're always looking to the future, and talks about his vision.

"I've been working on our marketing strategy and our product mix. I'm quite happy with where we have it -- what we need is to get better at all those things. We're looking at expanding. We did one recently. We want to continue to go that way. We need more space, and we need to be able to display and organize our stuff better, for our sake, and for the sake of our customers."

Here are pictures from today's celebration.