About Us

About Mission: Fun & Games & Boardgames.ca

Mission: Fun & Games is a family owned store (a mom and pop and two tot shop) that began in 1990 in a small 750 square foot location on the south west side of St. Albert, Alberta, Canada.

How We Began:

When we started in 1990, Mission: Fun & Games was a video game and movie store, dealing with the rentals and sales of VHS movies and Nintendo, Sega, and Gameboy games. John Engel, Tracy Robertson (now John's wife), Dan Matheson and Glenn Turkington built the store from scratch in a small vacant lease space in a strip mall on the south side of St. Albert. When Magic the Gathering was released in 1993, Mission: Fun & Games took a leap from their current niche, and was the second store in the Edmonton area to carry it. They immediately began running events in the vacant space adjacent to the store and as the CCG category grew, the store became more a game store than a rental store. In 1996 the time came to move to a larger storefront and also give up the rental business entirely. This second location was 1050 square feet, and we had the space to begin carrying miniatures and role playing products also. 

Only 13 months later, we moved across the parking lot to an even bigger home, taking two 1200 square foot bays, and added even more board games, miniatures, and role playing games to our selection. In February of 2004, another bay next door became available and we cut a hole for a door to the adjacent space. This became the main gaming area where tables and chairs were permanently set up. There was also a showroom for chess, poker, Go, mah jong, backgammon and cribbage in the new space. A special room for role playing events and other unique uses, about 8 by 12 feet, was set aside and renovated for use by role players in the new space as well.

In April 2007 a fourth bay adjoining on the east side was added.  Mainly for shipping and receiving,  as well as inventory storage.

In 2012, the dream finally became reality when our own freestanding location was purchased.  No more renting in a strip mall! The new location is a former restaurant along the main highway through St. Albert. The family spent most of spring and early summer 2012 renovating the location from a restaurant to a retail location. This would not have been possible without the help of our amazing gaming community. So many wonderful people helped us wash and paint walls and ceilings, teardown walls, clean everything and when the time came, pack, relocate and unpack the entirety of the store's product. When we opened our doors later that summer, it was to welcome our gaming community into an over 5000 square foot location featuring an open and sunny retail floor with airy high ceilings, a round gaming room with floor to ceiling windows, and more nerdy surprises than ever - such as the chess set in our garden, the suit of armor guarding the door, and our glow-in-the-dark scavenger hallway. Oh yeah, we also had the building painted to look like a castle.