From the St Catharines Standard:
Believe it or not, there was a time Clifton Hill wasn’t filled with museums, arcades, shops and houses of horror.
One man, Alec Rigby, helped pave the way for the hill to become Niagara Falls’ main tourist destination when he brought the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum to the south side of the street.
On July 24, Rigby, a former Niagara resident and well-known businessman born in St. Catharines, passed away at 85.
He became a partner of the Ripley’s Believe it or Not franchise in 1963 and opened the Niagara Falls “odditorium” that same year. Rigby became sole owner of the Ripley enterprise in 1969, moving the firm’s headquarters from New York to Toronto and opening museums in other locations including San Francisco, Chicago and Myrtle Beach.