By Jim Hagarty
2018
In Canada, we have a homegrown store called Canadian Tire, an enterprise so successful it has grown into a chain, with outlets in every city and many small towns. I have shopped there since I was a teenager. Here is what I have bought over the past fifty years: 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, 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, Christmas lights, gas 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 have never bought a tire from Canadian Tire. I probably never will.
