End of a retail era
Anyone who grew up in a rural area will be feeling some nostalgia over the loss of Sears Canada as a national institution.
Canadians will probably have fond memories of flipping through the Sears catalog but it was the Christmas Wish Book that really captivated the imaginations of rural children.
Children will remember using the Wish Book as a reference when drafting letters to Santa and cutting out pictures of their favourite toys. That was our idea of fun in a tech-less small town.
Remember the NFB short The Sweater? It tells the story of a young boy living in rural Quebec having to wait for his hockey sweater to arrive in the mail (it was ordered from the Eaton’s catalog, but same diff). This was a reality for people living in the boonies. There were few stores nearby to buy clothing and household items so many people relied on the catalog. There are still people who shop regularly from the catalog but obviously not enough to make it profitable.
On Monday Sears Canada received approval from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to proceed with a liquidation of all of its inventory and furniture, fixtures and equipment located at its remaining stores.
“Sears Canada has a long and well-documented history of being a great place to shop and work. Sears thanks its customers for their loyalty and support since 1953, when it began serving Canadians coast to coast under its then corporate name, Simpsons-Sears Ltd…” said officials. “Over the past 18 months, Sears Canada had embarked on a reinvention plan that had begun to gain traction with customers. Unfortunately, despite the outstanding efforts of dedicated associates across the company, Sears Canada does not have the financial resources to provide it with the time necessary to complete its reinvention.”
When we lament the loss of Sears, we are really bemoaning a shift in consumer culture. This is the tangible result of a new kind of shopping behaviour. We really weren’t happy with having limited choices and having to wait for packages to come in the mail, only to have to return them because they didn’t fit. The new catalog is of course the world wide web, with unlimited choices and prices so low, it’s puzzling (even knowing what we know about offshore manufacturing it doesn’t seem possible).
Sears probably sources all its goods from the same places but it was a Canadian institution and many jobs have been lost.
Even though the department store had become irrelevant, we are sorry to see it go.
