Another great blog from Wayne Cox:
Are there any corner stores left in this town? Well, there I go,
starting off an edition of The Word with a question! When faced with a question
like this, I always turn to my College Professor, Dr. Google.
According to my Prof, Vancouver had about 260 corner stores at their peak in the 1920s, but that number has dropped to around 80-90 today, maybe even less, and that’s according to officials at city hall. What caused the decline? Well, a number of things have been cited: rising costs, property taxes, and of course, competition from larger chain stores that have cropped up in the past few decades.
In the late ’50s and into the ’60s, we had a couple of corner stores in our neighbourhood. One was on a corner, but the other was one-third of the way down the block! Does that eliminate it from being a corner store? I don’t think so because it had everything to qualify as one. The store on the corner was on McDonald Street, and it was run by a wonderfully cheerful man named Jimmy Chu. Jimmy didn’t speak much English, but he was always so friendly to all of us school kids, who I’m sure could be a pain in the penny candy sometimes!
Jimmy’s Market wasn’t our main source of penny candy, though. It
was the store that was 1/3 of the way down 22nd or 21st avenue in the Dunbar
area of Vancouver. Memory fails me when it comes to the name of that store, but
it had all the necessary corner-store supplies: bread, milk, coffee and all the
other things needed in a kitchen. But the mother-load was the selection of
penny candy! Grab a little brown paper bag and fill it up at a cost of what
amounted to spare change, or most of your allowance! Remember the pricing of
penny candy? Two for a penny, three for a nickel. Liquorice pipes and cigars
were only a few cents. There were Popeye candy cigarettes and wax lips.
Remember wax lips? Oh my, the list goes on, and I’m sure you can add to it. My
dad’s favourite was the little yellow bananas, two for a penny, maybe? And who
knows what those were made of! They would melt in your mouth and were probably
so bad for you, but tasted so good!
This was also the store that was our main source for baseball and
football trading cards, complete with a slab of gum that had a white powder
covering it. I can’t even imagine how much money we spent trying to get the
complete set of baseball cards. We’d save them, trade them, or play card games
at school, where you’d throw the cards against a wall, and if your card landed
on your opponent’s card, you got to take his card! Only “traders” were used for
this game, because they got pretty beaten up.
The other corner store that wasn’t on a corner in our neck of the
woods was Heather’s. It was on Dunbar Street, and I’m guessing between 20th
Street and 21st Street? Heather's, as I recall, was more like a grocery store.
It may have had penny candy and trading cards, but not a lot. It was run by a
big man with a big smile and was really the place to buy a quart of milk, some
cereal or a loaf of bread. It seemed that most, if not all, of the corner
stores were also the store owner’s residence. Store up front, home in the back.
There are a few traditional corner stores in the South
Surrey/White Rock area. It seems 7/11 has taken over, but we do have a
marvellous corner store that sells the most wonderful flower bouquets. It’s
called Howe’s Market, and it’s just down the street from Blue Frog Studios on
Johnston Road. There are a few little markets on Marine Drive along the beach
in White Rock, but not as many as we used to see.
One more thing, and let’s turn the clock way back. About 35 years ago, I was in Winnipeg, Manitoba (like there’s another place called Winnipeg?), shooting some commercials for a couple of casinos. I had some downtime and decided to take a trip to my mom and dad’s neighbourhood. They grew up in Winnipeg, and both moved to Vancouver after World War II. They married on the coast, but they grew up in the prairie town. Naturally, I had heard so many stories of their neighbourhood. As I walked around, I found both of their childhood homes, a street apart. I also wandered by a corner store. For some reason, I decided to go in and was greeted by a woman who was probably older than Winnipeg itself. She greeted me with the usual Prairie hospitality and asked if I was new around there. I told her why I was in the neighbourhood, and she asked the names of my mom and dad. Believe it or not, she remembered them! Not them specifically, but their families, and where they used to live.
It was a reminder of what a real sense of community we may have
lost by losing so many of our corner stores, not to mention the penny candy!
