In Canada, we have a homegrown store called Canadian Tire, an enterprise so successful it has blossomed into a chain, with outlets in every city and many small towns.
I have shopped there since I was a teenager 60 years ago. Here is what I have bought over the past six decades: Ice skates, hockey sticks and equipment, cat litter, cat food, an electric toothbrush, furnace filters, plastic storage bins, recycling boxes, garbage cans, light bulbs, portable heaters, Christmas trees and lights, belts to hold up my pants, electric drills and jigsaws, handsaws, toolboxes, batteries, vacuum cleaners, plumbing supplies, kitchen pots and pans, water softener salt, windshield washer fluid, chocolate bars, garbage bags, paper towels, toilet paper, radios and , gas stereos, barbecues, hand-held water sprayers, cordless phones, car polish, spark plugs, engine oil, lamps and other such items too numerous to mention even if I could remember them all.
Oddly enough, perhaps, in all that time, I had never bought a tire from Canadian Tire, even though a major part of its trade is in auto parts and service. It took me until a while back to do that when I drove away with four new winter ones on my wheels. Just to be unorthodox, maybe, I have bought a few other rubber marvels from a business known as The Mufflerman.
We here in Canada have another big chain, Shoppers Drug Mart, which has seen fit to separate me from my meagre dollars on too many occasions to count. And yet, somehow, I have never bought any drugs at this department store which sports the word “drugs” right in its name.
But Pizza Hut. Oh yeah. I have never walked out of that place without a pizza. Maybe it helps that the restaurant sells nothing but pizzas.
©2018 Jim Hagarty
