Sam Nathanson came to Canada when he was 6 years old. The Nathason's were from the same village in Romania as the Finkelstein's who had already settled in Ottawa. Florence Weiner's brother Isaac was already in Canada when she and her sister came over from Russia when she was around 16 years old. Sam and Florence had three boys, Louis, Harry and Sam. Harry helped to establish Machzikei Hadas Synagogue on Murray Street before moving to Toronto where he established a pickle factory. Sam used to help his father Nusin who was a peddler. They would travel by horse and wagon out to the buy produce from the farmers outside Ottawa and sometimes spend the night sleeping underneath the wagon. They would bring the produce into town and sell it in the Hintonberg area. He also had a produce stand on the Byward Market where they sold their produce. After Sam Nathanson got married he opened Sam's Buy and Sell at 41 William Street. His daughter Sylvia Nathanson Bronsther recalled that her father told her "when he first started out, he used to lay out the snow shovels on the shelves to make it seem like he had alot of stock. As time went on he had second hand clothing, musical instruments, buffalo robes, trunks etc." When Sylvia's mother arrived from Russia just before the 1st World War, she attended school to learn English, and then went to work for Futural Furs. There she learned how to sew and repair fur coats which she did once she married and worked alongside Sam in Sam's Buy and Sell.

They lived above the store until Sylvia got married in 1946. To escape the summer heat, her father built a cottage in Brittania where they would spend the summer. Sylvia recalled that the apartment upstairs where they lived had only two windows at the very front and the farmers used to hang the meat in front of the Market Building so that there were all kinds of flies in the summer. As a young girl, she would skate in Anglesey Park and go to "Race Hill" at Major's Hill to toboggan. Sylvia remembered that when she was out with her girlfriends to the theatre at night, she would run home from Rideau Street along William and ring the bell of the store. Her father would come down from upstairs and let her in. There was an earth floor in the basement of the building where her father kept the pickles and wine that he made. There was no back yard, so people would sit out along William Street in the evening to socialize.

Sylvia recalled that her father got the licence to run a pawn shop from the City of Ottawa when a Mr. Rose gave his up. The store was quite narrow and went a ways back and her father installed a large safe with shelves to hold the valuables when he turned it into a pawn shop. He would keep articles for 1 year and after that if the owner of the article didn't buy it back, he could sell it. Everything had to be entered into a book which the City detectives would inspect periodically, looking for any stolen merchandise. If a customer came in that looked suspicious they would call the police but pretend that they were placing an order with the butcher down on Clarence Street. The police knew if they received such a call to come to their store.

After Sylvia married Bert Bronsther, Bert worked with her father in the store. They had a long, glass display case for jewelry and small valuables. Eventually, Bert was selling mostly musical instruments and they needed more room so they sold the store on William to finance a new place on Bank Street near Alta Vista. Sam's ABC Music was a large store selling mostly new instruments with classrooms in the basement for lessons. When interest rates went way up in the late 1980's, they closed the store and Bert went into real estate for a while before becoming a commissionaire.