Hilton Silberg is going to slow down a bit, but clearly, he has no plans to retire.

"I just love pharmacy," Mr. Silberg said just a few days after the sale of DayNight Pharmacy to the Mississauga-based Katz Group (owners of the Rexall Pharma Plus chain of stores) became official. "I don't think there's any other profession I would ever have chosen that would let me do what I wanted to do."

Mr. Silberg and his wife, Shirley, both pharmacists originally from South Africa, began the independent DayNight Pharmacy in 1991 with their first store at Stone Church and Upper Ottawa in Hamilton. A Looney Land, Hamilton's first dollar store, was added a short time later.

DayNight Pharmacy was actually the second time the Silbergs opened an independent drug store. In 1981 they started Amherst Pharmacy on Governors Road in Dundas. The store was renamed Hilton's Pharmacy in 1984 and was purchased by Shoppers Drug Mart three years later.

The east Mountain business soon became popular and over the next 15 years four more DayNight pharmacies opened in the Hamilton area, including two more on the Mountain, one on Hatt Street in Dundas near their home and one in the east end. DayNight brand products would become a staple in many Hamilton homes.

Mr. Silberg said DayNight was able to successfully compete with the national drug store chains by providing knowledgeable, friendly and innovative service.

"That was the strength of DayNight, I was hands-on," Mr. Silberg said.

Perhaps the biggest innovation was Mr. Silberg's push to change the city bylaw in the early 90's to allow DayNight to stay open until midnight.

"We were the first midnight store in Hamilton," Mr. Silberg said.

But the longer store hours also meant longer working hours for Mr. Silberg, who admitts to almost living in the east Mountain store in those days.

"We worked like crazy fools," he recalled. "I worked from 9 a.m. until midnight every single day for a year."

Mr. Silberg figures his three children (two sons and a daughter), now all adults, slept in all of the stores, except Dundas, while they were growing up. Over the years, Mr. Silberg noted, he received a number of offers for the business, which he declined.

Last spring, Mr. Silberg said the offer from the Katz Group came "out of the blue" and he and Shirley discussed the offer in May during a month-long visit to Australia.

Given that he was turning 56 and wanted to slow down a bit and do more community work, that his children did not wish to come into the business and, not unlike other sectors, because the pharmacy business has changed since he began with the national chains wielding more competitive clout, Mr. Silberg said he and his wife decided to pursue the offer. After several months of discussions they formally agreed to sell DayNight Pharmacy to the Katz Group on Oct. 26, Mr. Silberg's birthday. The DayNight signs are expected to be replaced with Rexall Pharma Plus signs by the end of January.

As part of the sale Mr. Silberg insisted his staff be retained by the new owner.

"They guaranteed in the contract they would hire every staff member in the stores to a similar job with the same rate of pay and seniority." Mr. Silberg said. "That was really important to me."

The new owner is also expected to invest heavily in the Hamilton stores and introduce new products.

Mr. Silberg continued to work in the stores, particularly the Dundas location, dispensing medications and chatting with customers as he had always done, almost until the last day.

"It's been a very emotional time for me and my staff and my customers too," Mr. Silberg said. "Shirley and I are really grateful that people were so supportive of us."

While he admits the sale of the stores is enough to retire on, Mr. Silberg plans to keep on working.

He has been retained by the Katz Group to work on pharmacy initiatives for the Rexall Pharma Plus chain and plans to act as a teacher and mentor to young pharmacists in the stores.

"That's where I'm most effective," Mr. Silberg said. "I'm not an office guy."

Mr. Silberg also plans to continue the popular Health Matters noon hour program on CHML radio.

Although he has started up independent drug stores twice in the past, Mr. Silberg said he has no plans to do it a third time.

"If I did reincarnate myself it would be more like a wellness clinic or something like that," he said.

Mr. Silberg was quick to add the chances of him doing something like that are one in 10,000.

Outside pharmacy, Mr. Silberg plans to do more charity work. He already sits on the board of several local agencies.

"I love fundraising actually," said Mr. Silberg, who sees social work as a way of paying back the community that has been so good to him.

Mr. Silberg and Shirley attended the 1976 Olympics in Montreal and decided they wanted to emigrate to Canada from South Africa where the racist apartheid system was firmly in place.

"It was too immoral," Mr. Silberg said. "I didn't want to live there."

Getting permission to come to Canada was not easy. Mr. Silberg said he had to stage a mini sit-in at the Canadian embassy in Pretoria before embassy staff would speak to him.

The couple came to Canada a year later and settled in Toronto where they attended the University of Toronto to get their Ontario pharmacist license while at the same time working at a drug store each night for $3 an hour. They moved to Dundas in 1984.

Looking back over his nearly 30 years in the pharmacy business, Mr. Silberg is amazed at how quickly the time has passed.

"My only regret is how fast it went by," he said.