Need anything from the store?
A day late, but brimming with grocery facts
In this week’s edition of The Sewer Socialists:
The supermarket sweep • Radical happiness • A new party? • Cool facts for cool people
A day late and many thousands of dollars short, or so OSAP keeps telling me. Apologies on the “surprise” Friday edition of The Sewer Socialists. I spent over three weeks geolocating 600+ grocery stores from select periods of 111 years of Hamilton history, which included redrawing the streetscape and waterfront of the city from 1912, 1960, and 2023. All I have to say to that is: Holy wow, there’s been a lot of change here in one hundredy eleven years. We’ve been especially unkind to Hamilton Harbour, dumping obscene amounts of waste and soil into the lake to better accommodate industry. Anyway, beside all that, I also spent Thursday night celebrating the Ford Government’s surprise decision to reverse their terrible Greenbelt destruction plans with some of this city’s most inspiring environmental activists. I think that is reason enough to delay a newsletter by a day. Thanks for your understanding and on with the show!
The Supermarket Sweep
There’s a building in Hamilton I absolutely love. It is unassuming, ordinary, and, honestly, pretty simple. Tucked into the Durand neighbourhood at the southeast corner of Herkimer and Caroline South, this fairly basic structure has always been amazing to me, in large part because of the spirit that emanates from this place. The fact it was built into some historic houses, the big open spaces out front that enlarge the sidewalk, the dated but charming tiles that have been slapped onto the façade…it all just works.
This kind of building should exist everywhere across the city. But, for the most part, buildings like 117-119 Herkimer are a relic of the past, reminding us of a very different time. A time when amenities were placed close to where people lived. A time when there was real variety in the market. A time when you didn’t need a car to access the basics of everyday life.
Currently, 117-119 Herkimer are occupied by a chain pharmacy and a convenience store. But, back in the day, this was the site of D.M. Brown Grocery. There isn’t any information available about this particular store online, but, in 1912, D.M. Brown’s was one of 287 grocery stores in the city. Even at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, Brown’s Good Foods (as it had rebranded) was one of 272 grocery stores across Hamilton, of which 85% were independently owned.
So how is it that, in 111 years, we’ve gone from having 287 grocery stores (of which 98% were independent) to having just 79 stores, of which only 19% are independent?
It all has to do with corporate centralization, poor planning, and an over-reliance on the private automobile. And the evidence is in the landscape. So let’s take a look.
I say “groceria”, you say “groceteria”
We should start off with a definition of a grocery store. Yeah, I know, boring, but it is important to set some parameters for what we’ll be looking at today.
There’s a bulky StatsCan definition that’s tied to the North American Industry Classification System, otherwise known by its gross little acronym “NAICS”. Sounds like an unappealingly dry cookie.
That definition, much like what I imagined a NAICS biscuit to taste like, is dull. It’ll be in the footnotes because it helps to inform my definition of a grocery store, which is:
A retail establishment offering a general line of food with readily available staple goods that have been sourced from predominantly non-retail suppliers.1
That last bit is key, because we need to isolate the case of the convenience store. Convenience stores are mainly focused on supplying…well…convenience goods. Chips, candy, pop, some basic household and grocery items, an array of novelty bongs, lottery, etc. Many of these goods are purchased from places like Costco or other suppliers. While there are plenty of convenience stores around, they don’t offer the same variety of goods that a grocery store does.2
This matters when we’re talking about food security.
The UN’s 1996 World Food Summit helped to define food security thus:
Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.3
We can’t necessarily guarantee food security for folks when all they have access to is exclusively processed or shelf-stabilized foods sold at a significant mark-up. So convenience stores just don’t meet the criteria for being considered stable food providers.
So a “grocery store” has a readily-available mix of fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy products, meats and meat alternatives, staples (like flour, sugar, other baking goods), a whole array of packaged and unpackaged products, and occasionally some beer and wine. These might be sold alongside other goods, as is the case in places like Walmart and Costco.
We all know what a grocery store looks like now. It is a massive building (the Mall Road Fortinos, for example, is 8514 square meters, over 10 times the size of 117-119 Herkimer and the size of 1.5 American football fields…since that’s apparently how we determine the relative size of something?) with ample front-facing parking. It has rows and rows of foodstuffs with the occasional meat department, bakery, fish counter, florist, organic food section, pharmacy, home goods section, etc.
But they didn’t always look like that. Before 1919 in Canada, grocery stores looked much like the old general stores from the movies. They usually had a wide counter, behind which a shopkeeper would stand and collect groceries for you upon your request. You’d walk in with a list and ask the grocer for the items on said list. They’d get to work assembling your order while you wandered home. Later, they’d make a home delivery on a horse-drawn cart. After the whole “horseless carriage” fad took off, some also made deliveries via truck.
This was part of the “credit and delivery” model of grocery provision. You’d basically be starting a tab every time you’d walk into a grocery store.
The other model was called “cash and carry”, where you’d provide grocers with your list, which they would fetch from shelves behind the counter and package for you to take home. In these stores, you’d pay with cash right away.
That was the pre-1919 grocery world. In both models, shopping was a simpler affair where a trusted neighbourhood grocer would collect goods for you. You weren’t expected to go rummaging through piles of oranges or shake your own cans of beans.
Then along came a man named Theodore Pringle Loblaw.
How T.P. Loblaw changed Canada
Loblaw was a dynamic man, always restless and always on the move. After leaving the family farm in Simcoe County in the autumn of 1890, he made his was to Toronto and got his start in retail working for an ageing Northern Irishman who ran a growing emporium and mail-order business on Yonge Street. The employment only lasted a little while, since Timothy Eaton found shopping dried up after the Christmas rush and having a whole contingent of extra workers was hurting his bottom line.
So Loblaw left Eaton’s and began working in a more stable industry: groceries. By 1900, he owned his own store, which he sold in 1908 to raise money for a different idea. Instead of just one store, he wanted a whole chain of Loblaw stores around. He made that dream a reality two years later but, as was his habit, he became bored and sold the chain (which would quickly be taken over by another emerging player in the grocery world - Dominion Stores). In 1919, he took a job with the United Farmers’ Co-operative Company (UFCC). At the time, the UFCC was the retail wing of the United Farmers of Ontario political party. Yeah, one of the forerunners to today’s NDP helped to organize cooperative grocery and agricultural supply stores across Ontario. Wild, eh?
He brought a businessman’s personality to the co-op, which ruffled some feathers in the movement. W.C. Good, a leader in the UFCC and eventual Progressive Party MP for Brant County (and one of the first major proponents of proportional representation in Canada) said that Loblaw “wanted nothing to do with any business he could not dominate.… I don’t think he ever had any patience with, or even any knowledge of, the Co-operative Movement.”4
Tensions between the capitalist’s capitalist and the progressive farmers trying to secure a better future grew until 1920, at which point Loblaw quit to focus on a side hustle he had going.
See, working with the UFCC gave him an opportunity to travel throughout the United States where a wild new concept had rocked the grocery world. A grocer in Memphis, Tennessee named Clarence Saunders had opened a revolutionary new store in 1916 called Piggly Wiggly. This new store flipped the whole grocery experience, replacing the old counters and mustachioed grocers with rows of products in neat lines, wire baskets to put goods into, and cashiers at the exit, who would ring up the items that you collected yourself. Saunders called this new kind of store a “groceteria”.
Loblaw loved the idea. In 1919, while still working for the UFCC, he connected with John Milton Cork, the son of the first grocer to hire the young Loblaw, and together, they opened Canada’s first groceteria at 2923 Dundas Street West. But he kept the aprons.
Reactions were mixed. The stores required less staff, but there were worries that products just sitting out on shelves in the open would encourage theft. That, and, as Cork acknowledged, “there are a certain class of customers who expect credit, clerk service, delivery and expensive labels, and are willing to pay for what they want.”5 Simply put, the upper crust did not take too kindly to some brash country boy telling them they needed to collect their own groceries.
But while Toronto’s elites might not have loved the idea of a self-serve groceteria, everyday shoppers loved the convenience, the lower prices, and the novelty. Within 10 years, Loblaws had become a grocery giant, spreading across Canada and even into the United States. Other stores began to copy the groceteria model, which would become the dominant way grocery stores were laid out by the 1930s.
Loblaw himself, though, got bored once again. He started raising prize-winning cows and pigs and, in 1927, bought his grandparent’s old farm as a hobby spot. The next year, while puttering around on the farm, he had an accident that put him in hospital where he developed a life-threatening case of pneumonia. That inspired him to sell his shares in Loblaws and, by 1929, it looked like Dominion Stores was ready to jump in and take over another one of Loblaw’s discarded business adventures. The only thing that stopped the deal from going through was the onset of the Great Depression that October.
But the Depression saw the groceteria business expand wildly. Everyone was looking for ways to save money and a self-serve, paired down grocery store could help stretch everyone’s shopping dollar. A reinvigorated Loblaw stepped back into his company, overseeing a period of incredible expansion. That didn’t last long, though, as a minor operation in 1933 saw the grocery develop meningitis and die at age 58. His business partner, John Cook, took over as president until he was bought out in 1947 by the son of a Toronto-area baker who wanted to break into the grocery market. With Willard Garfield Weston’s purchase of Loblaws, the chain came into the hands of the family that continues to control the business to this day.
Groceries for the automobile age
As time marched on, grocery stores started to change. The post-war housing boom saw the Canadian government and municipalities pour resources into inexpensive and more solitary modes of living. Single detached homes, parkways, and shopping centres replaced worker’s cottages and downtown multiplexes, walkable neighbourhoods and streetcar lines, local business districts and farmers markets.
Grocery stores became physically larger to accommodate a wider array of products and new innovations. The widespread fascination with frozen foods (frozen dinners in particular) required freezer spaces. Improved refrigeration allowed for more unique produce to be kept in stock year round. And, with more and more people driving to the store, they could cart more groceries home in a single trip, meaning consumers were buying more and more each time they visited the store.
This also meant that stores needed to provide complimentary car storage for their customers. Expansive parking lots now accompanied new builds, which looked bright and modern in comparison to the original groceterias that seemed like dingy, sad reflections of a less advanced era.
The mom-and-pop grocers on street corners just couldn’t compare to bright new stores opening in shopping centres and strip malls across the country.
By 1960, there were plenty of Canadian-based chains in operation. Loblaws and Dominion were the two power players, joined two Quebec-based chains: Lasalle Stores (with their increasingly popular Metro stores) and Steinberg’s, which had a robust presence in Ontario. A&P operated a subsidiary of their American parent company, making them the only multinational chain in Canada. There were IGA stores around, but they were run as franchises, which is an uncommon way to structure grocery stores.
Kresge’s (later K-Mart) tried the grocery thing for a while, but that chain didn’t last long. In 1985, the first Costco opened in Canada, taking the self-serve grocery model and pumping it full of retail growth hormones. The tiny mid-century grocery stores had nothing on a gigantic warehouse designed for wholesale. To make matters worse, Walmart had entered Canada in 1984, assuming control of the flagging Woolco brand of stores. Their entry into the grocery market has further diluted local control.
Though, there isn’t much local local control of grocery stores anyway. Starting shortly after the Westons took control of Loblaws, they began a process of corporate consolidation that saw them gobble up competitors as soon as they grew too big. When Power Supermarkets, a discount chain run by the enterprising Weinstein family (and employing a budding young entrepreneur named Ed Mervish, before he added “Honest” to his name) grew too large, the Westons swooped in and bought them out. The tables turned on them when one of the Weinsteins ended up becoming the president of the company, but this happened at a time when Loblaws was stagnating.
Loblaws had ballooned beyond their means and, in the early 1970s, faced possible bankruptcy. Willard Garfield Weston decided to put his ambitious young son, Galen, to take over the business. A successful grocer in Ireland, Galen Weston jumped at the opportunity to modernize the business, which mostly involved a corporate restructuring that resulted in the closure of nearly 80 stores. They rebranded and cleaned up, adding No Name and President’s Choice products in 1978 and 1983 respectively. Loblaws again became profitable, and started experimenting with “hypermarkets” in Western Canada that would become Real Canadian Superstores. Into the 1990s, the company became more efficient, getting rid of expensive American subsidiaries and processing plants while buying up other Canadian chains like Quebec’s Provigo stores. This kept going through the 2000s, with the Westons selling off Neilson Dairies to Quebec’s Saputo Inc and the family’s original venture, Weston’s Bakery, to Mexico’s terribly named Grupo Bimbo while, at the same time, buying T&T Supermarkets in 2009.
Their competitors consolidated as well. Steinberg’s consumed the American chain Grand Union (which itself had bought out Hamilton’s first local grocery chain - William Carroll Grocers) while A&P took over Dominion Stores after that chain was taken over by the investment firm of Conrad Black who wanted rid of the faltering business. Despite being one of the biggest corporations in the world at one time, A&P also faltered and was bought by Metro (as Lasalle had rebranded to), which eventually brought all stores under the main banner in 2008. When Steinberg’s fell apart in the early 90s, Metro and Provigo split the business, further expanding the grocery portfolio of Canada’s two largest grocers.
Today, there are five main “players” in the Canadian grocery market: Loblaws, Metro, Empire (the group that owns Sobeys), Walmart, and Costco. According to the Competition Bureau, these five chains control over 75% of the Canadian grocery market. We’re at the point where the three Canadian chains made $100 billion dollars in 2022, raking in $3.6 billion in profit on the top. As that same Competition Bureau report said:
“For new players and regional independents, the Canadian grocery industry is tough to break into. Canada is a big country and opening new grocery stores is expensive and difficult. The industry’s big players operate thousands of stores and are well entrenched in the shopping habits of Canadians…In recent years, industry concentration has increased, and it has become more difficult than ever for businesses to enter, expand, and compete effectively.”6
Since 1986, the Competition Bureau has approved 15 mergers. 5 have involved Empire (Sobeys merging with some IGA franchises, Safeway, Commisso’s, Farm Boy, and Longo’s), 4 have involved Loblaws (some IGA franchises, Provigo, Shopper’s Drug Mart, and T&T), and 3 have involved Metro (Steinberg’s, A&P, and Quebec’s Jean Coutu drug stores).
In essence, we have a near complete grocery oligopoly in Canada. The government has allowed the market to do what the market will do, which has created a situation where 3 Canadian companies and 2 American multinationals have almost complete control over something as important as food.
Municipalities have helped facilitate their growth by enthusiastically planning for large, car-centric grocery stores which are often either purpose-built in new developments (usually greenfield sites in the sprawl) or are plopped in the middle of cities, requiring the demolition of human-scaled buildings to make way for parking lots.
All of these factors - consolidation, poor planning, and auto-centricity - have seen the rise of “food deserts” in Canadian cities, where predominantly inner-city neighbourhoods do not have, as the United Nations puts it, “access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.”
Hamilton’s grocery stores through the years
We can see the effect of this consolidation and physical expansion on the grocery store scene here in Hamilton.
Let’s look at three snapshots: 1912, 1960, and 2023. I selected 1912 because McMaster University has some amazing fire-insurance maps available online from 1911. These maps show the location of many businesses that are long-gone, often actually listing them as grocery stores on the maps.
Here’s 117-119 Herkimer on that map. You can see where it says “GROC” for “grocery”, as well as the other uses of the building.
To find all the grocery stores in the city, I used the Hamilton Public Library’s scans of the Vernon’s City Directory for 1912. If you’ve never taken a look at one, definitely check it out. They list everyone’s addresses, occupations, phone numbers, relations, etc. They’re a great resource for finding out who might have lived in your home if you live somewhere built before 1970, when they stopped publishing the directory (the phone book took over then).
1960 was another easy choice, because I actually have a 1960 Vernon’s Directory (very dusty, but very cool) and was able to use McMaster’s online map library (specifically some very clear aerial photos from 1959) to match businesses with locations after I created some new coast and street maps using QGIS.
And today was easy because I had already done some of this work for a 2020 project on “livable Hamilton” I did.
So let’s start with 1912. In that year, Hamilton had a population of about 82,000, making the city the 6th largest in Canada. For that population, all sandwiched between Paradise Road in the west and Kenilworth Avenue in the east and barely making it up and over the Escarpment, there were 287 grocery stores. That was one store for every 286 people.
There were stores in almost every neighbourhood, though there were fewer grocers in wealthier communities like St. Clair, Blakeley, Stinson, and the southern portions of Kirkendall, where groceries were likely the responsibility of servants. Neighbourhoods like Strathcona had 25 grocery stores while the North End had 29, and Beasley had an overwhelming 54. Some neighbourhoods had dense clusters of grocery stores, with Sherman Ave. North featuring four such stores in a one-block stretch just south of Burlington Street. Close by, in the space of 5 blocks on Barton, one would walk past seven grocers, starting with a branch of William Carroll’s chain at 585 Barton East and ending at F.G. Morris’ store at the corner of Barton and Sherman.
The Morris store gives us a good glimpse at classic grocery store design. Usually located on a street corner, a typical grocery would have open windows, an angled entrance, and apartments above, either for the grocer or for them to rent out to supplement their income.
Not all grocery stores were on street corners. Some enterprising grocers would build mid-block, creating a fascinating visual break in an otherwise monotonous row of single detached homes. Fred Culms’ Grocery on Sherman North is an excellent example of this mid-block phenomenon.
Of course, the Farmer’s Market was a central hub for people as well, but neighbourhood grocery stores provided reliable goods within walking distance for everyone.
Within 20 minutes, almost every Hamiltonian could walk to at least one grocer. The blue circles on the following map show the 1.5 km radius around grocery stores, which is what an average person can comfortably walk in about 20 minutes. Nearly every part of the city is covered, showing that Hamiltonians in 1912 could pretty easily grab groceries almost anywhere. And these were small stores. William Hannah’s grocery at the corner of Hunter and Walnut (now a hair salon) had less than 58 square metres of floorspace. Much smaller than the leviathan Mall Road Fortinos with its 8514 square metres of floorspace.
At that time, all but 7 grocery stores were independently run. Only William Carroll’s chain existed in the city, which was locally run and did not have locations outside Hamilton. These 7 chain stores accounted for 2% of the market in the city.
By the 1960s, there had been more changes in the grocery market, but plenty of independent grocers held on. The city had expanded to its pre-amalgamation size by 1960, stretching from the Dundas border in the west to the awkward, jagged dividing line between Hamilton and Stoney Creek in the east. Development had boomed on the mountain and in the east end, where mid-century suburbs featured a mix of new, car-centric development and some smaller corner grocers. Only two grocers survived from 1912: Browns, on Herkimer, which I mentioned at the beginning, and the Semmen’s Grocery at the corner of King and Pearl in Strathcona (connected to the wealthy Semmen’s family, who owned a whole load of things in the neighbourhood).
There were a mix of shopping plaza grocers and corner groceries on the mountain and in the east end. A great example is the former Champ’s Groceteria at the corner of Queensdale and East 23rd.
There were 272 grocery stores in Hamilton in 1960 (which was, consequently, the year before John Fortino would open his first grocery store). Of them, 85% were independently owned. 10% of stores in Hamilton were connected to national chains (Loblaw, Dominion, and Steinberg’s) while another 2% were local chains (mainly Lyons Foodmarts, founded by none other than Sue Ann Levy’s grandfather). The rest were A&P and IGA stores, which had no more than 10 locations across the city.
While the walkability factor was declining by that point, the large number of traditional grocers meant that most Hamiltonians were still within a 20 minute walk of a grocery store. Some of the newer mountain developments weren’t well covered, but from Ainslie Wood to Rosedale, Hamiltonians could still walk to the corner grocery and get most of what they needed.
Fast forward to 2023. Hamilton’s down to just 79 grocery stores. Most are located in new developments while a select few downtown stores remain. With a population of just under 570,000, there’s 1 grocery store for every 7,207 people. It is almost hard to visualize, but there are very few neighbourhoods with much grocery variety within walking distance.
Just under 50% of grocery in Hamilton is controlled by Metro, Loblaws, and Empire. Another 11% is taken by Walmart and Costco. Throw the rapidly expanding Giant Tiger brand as well, and that’s 2/3 of the Hamilton grocery market. 17% is dedicated to local chains like the Dundurn/Strathcona/Ottawa Market family of stores, Goodness Me!, Zarky’s, and Denninger’s.
You can see the effects of consolation in the landscape. The blue diamonds are stores that existed in 1912. The green squares are stores from 1960. The orange dots are modern grocery stores. In the west end, most stores on York, James, Main, King, and Barton have closed. Even some of the first “suburban” stores like the Loblaw in Westdale (where the Shopper’s Drug Mart is now) or the Steinberg’s in Ainslie Wood (at Hollywood, which is now a paint store) are gone, replaced by a massive, car-centric Fortinos and another huge auto-oriented Food Basics.
The east end hasn’t faired well, either. Dozens of little stores along Cannon, Roxborough, Sherman, Kenilworth, and Beach Road are gone, leaving little more than 2 discount FreshCo stores, a Walmart, and a Metro in east Hamilton. Most new stores are in Stoney Creek or in shopping plazas on the east mountain.
All wrapped up in brown deli paper
Grocery consolidation has been disastrous for Canadians. A smaller and smaller number of grocers control the market, offering shoppers little choice but to bounce between a few brands all controlled by the same wealthy families. This centralization has given large corporations an opportunity to profit off a necessity while doing little to invest in the communities from which they extract.
This increasingly oligopolistic market doesn’t give Canadians choice, and allows corporations to bend communities to their will. Because it is easier to build massive stores and get consumers to drive to them, there is little incentive to try small-format or neighbourhood-level grocery stores. A few half-hearted efforts by Loblaws were quietly closed as the need to provide a steady return to shareholders trumped any efforts to innovate and change consumer behaviours.
Grocery shopping today is, frankly, miserable. Shoppers fight alienating and unpredictable traffic to get to massive stores all controlled by the same people to buy overpriced goods shipped in from far away, all while these stores try to give them credit cards, ask for donations (sometimes of their own products, allowing them to make money and take the credit for helping a charity), and find ways to squeeze their workers for more and more.
This week’s cozy meeting between the federal government and grocery CEOs won’t change things. There might be some agreement on “price stabilization” but, in reality, the country’s grocery oligopoly is bad for consumers, bad for the environment, bad for communities, bad for workers, and bad for business.
So what can we do to change this?
At the federal level, strong legislation needs to be put in place that prevents large companies from just eating up every competitor until we have a monopoly. Efforts must be made to prevent needless corporate mergers. In essence, we need to save the capitalists from themselves.
Locally, communities have to stand up and reject more car-centric, sprawling grocery stores. There have to be conversations between retailers and municipalities on how we can start to build human-scaled grocery stores. Incorporating stores into mixed-use, dense communities, incentivizing small-format stores, and outright banning inefficient surface parking could help to better integrate grocery stores into the community. Neighbourhoods shouldn’t be rebuilt to serve the needs of businesses; businesses should fit into existing neighbourhoods.
And we need more independent stores. I know the grocery business is tough, so buying local is a first step toward this. Looking for neighbourhood-level, independent or local chains and giving them your business is important. I’m lucky enough to live in a part of the city with plenty of local choice, but I know that isn’t a reality for everyone. That’s why we have to bring back neighbourhood-level stores across our cities.
Local business is good, but co-operatives can really make a difference. Worker-led stores could be a gamechanger, providing a strong connection to the community, security for workers (who will also be the store’s owners), and more opportunities for dialogue between neighbourhoods and grocers on how we can make food more affordable, more accessible, and more environmentally-conscious.
Accessing high-quality, affordable, local food should not be hard. Walking to a grocery store should not be an unfeasible proposition. Having more choice in the grocery market should not be an unreasonable request.
We all need food. It can bring people together, be a reflection of your culture and your identity, can be a way to express yourself, and can make us more mindful of the world we live in. And we deserve good, affordable, neighbourhood-level grocery stores where we can get that food. We used to have plenty, but, over the years, we’ve seen as corporate consolidation and car-centricity have stripped away our choices and reshaped our communities to better suit the desire of grocery companies for higher profits.
In 111 years, Hamilton has seen a 72.5% decrease in the number of grocery stores while the city’s population has increased by 600%. Grocery stores are more spread out, controlled by a smaller number of companies, and are less affordable than ever.
We deserve better grocery stores. Because I think every community would be a lot better off if we had more buildings like 117-119 Herkimer.7
Chris in print
While working on this piece, I also took some time to put together an opinion article for The Hamilton Spectator about how galdern angry everyone is these days. Anger over tiny homes, trans rights, the housing market…it these things have roots in fear. That’s why I’m really pumping this whole “radical happiness” thing. We should all be happy warriors, pushing for good policy and setting our own agendas. Too many political movements obsess over “fighting” something. That’s only part of the battle. You then need to propose a compelling, comprehensive, and ambitious alternative. Fight transphobes, yes, but how are we then going to improve access to gender-affirming care, supportive schools, etc? Fight against NIMBYs, yes, but how are we going to get affordable homes built?
Anyway, hopefully you enjoy the piece!
The future, the past
A ragtag group of former Conservatives angry with the rightward drift in the party have broken off to create what they’re calling a new “centrist” party, which really just looks like a rebrand of the Progressive Conservatives from the 1960s.
Called the “Canadian Future Party”, this new group will be led by former New Brunswick NDP leader turned PC cabinet minister turned independent Domenic Cardy.
Their early policies seem not overly terrible? They’re pro electoral reform, acknowledge climate change is a problem, and want to bring in more skilled immigrants. They’re basically idealistic Liberals, though, so they may end up siphoning voters from them, rather than from Poilievre’s CPC.
Ultimately, it is hard to get a new party off the ground in Canada without being able to completely dominate the narrative around a single issue. Reform (which was really a rebranded Social Credit Party, but whatever) focused on Western alienation, the Bloc did the same with Quebec, and the PPC only took off when they became the anti-vaxx party. So unless the CFP can become the leader on housing or immigration or something, they’ll likely go the way of the Progressive Canadian Party (the sad break away faction of PCs who didn’t want to merge with the Alliance in 2003) and fade away after a couple of very underwhelming elections.
But I’ve been wrong before, so who knows?
Cool facts for cool people
This whole newsletter is really long, so I won’t spend too much time here, except to say that the Metroland closures and restructuring is really awful and will make local news here worse. Some dedicated people are going to lose their jobs and communities will lose important media assets. Capitalism and journalism don’t work well together, unfortunately. So make sure you throw some love to local independent journalists like Joey over at The Public Record.
Based on StatsCan’s definition: This Canadian industry comprises establishments, known as supermarkets and grocery stores, primarily engaged in retailing a general line of food, such as canned, dry and frozen foods; fresh fruits and vegetables; fresh and prepared meats, fish, poultry, dairy products, baked products and snack foods. These establishments also typically retail a range of non-food household products, such as household paper products, toiletries and non-prescription drugs. - From Statistics Canada - North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Canada 2012 Code 445110 - Supermarkets and other grocery (except convenience) stores - Link
The StatsCan definition of Convenience Store is: This Canadian industry comprises establishments, known as convenience stores, primarily engaged in retailing a limited line of convenience items that generally includes milk, bread, soft drinks, snacks, tobacco products, newspapers and magazines. These establishments may retail a limited line of canned goods, dairy products, household paper and cleaning products, as well as alcoholic beverages, and provide related services, such as lottery ticket sales and video rental."" Statistics Canada - North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Canada 2012 Code 445120 - Convenience stores - Link
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: An Introduction to the Basic Concepts of Food Security - Link
Stephen A. Otto, “LOBLAW, THEODORE PRINGLE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed September 20, 2023, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/loblaw_theodore_pringle_16E.html.
Ibid.
I used a whole bunch of sources for this, but check out TVO’s article on Loblaws, this BlogTO piece on old Toronto grocery stores, and a second BlogTO one on the same, and absolutely read this Competition Bureau report on consolidation in the grocery sector.
"Give your list to the grocer ..." - not in Britain, mate. In the late 40's/50's I accompanied my mother to the grocers (10 mins walk). She would call out an item, watch him weigh it out, announce the price and chalk it on the blackboard, wrap it in newspaper, and hand it over into our big fabric bags. All this in raucous banter with us and the neighbours in line behind us, and local gossip.
We carried it all home - so small quantities and frequent trips!
Thanks for a tremendous article. Fascinating informative. What a loss this City has suffered. As a kid I worked in one of those small community stores, a gentler, friendlier time.