Cana­dian Sou­venirs at a Busy Cor­ner Store on Yonge Street (Toronto)

In North Amer­ica, not spend­ing money is almost a sin – what, don’t you want to help the econ­omy? That’s prob­a­bly why every­thing is con­ve­niently set up so that peo­ple can shop any­where, anytime.

In France, con­sumers have to abide by retail­ers’ will. Not so long ago, stores were closed between noon and 2 pm so that shop­keep­ers could go have a lengthy French lunch. Most stores still close at 7 pm, and by law on Sun­days and for statu­tory hol­i­days. There weren’t as many chain stores as well – if your favourite baker wanted to take a month off in August, he wasn’t going to hire employ­ees to mind the store while he was away – he would just put a hand­writ­ten sign on the door, « fermé en août pour con­gés annuels”. Reg­u­lar cus­tomers would show up in the evening to pick up their daily baguette and see the sign: “ah oui”, they would nod. “He took his August hol­i­days”. If the bak­ery was really good, some would abstain from buy­ing bread for the month of August. Indeed, it would be very awk­ward if the backup bak­ery would turn out to have bet­ter bread. In France, cheat­ing on the baker is a sin, but enjoy it makes the sin worse.

This is not likely to hap­pen in North Amer­ica – at least not in cities. For a start, a lot of stores are chain stores. If your reg­u­lar Sub­way is closed, you won’t shed a tear hav­ing to walk an extra block to get your sand­wich fix. You will be served the exact same thing, no mat­ter where you go. Besides, stores always seem to be open. Super­mar­kets close late at night and open early includ­ing on Sun­days, some are even 24/7.

When­ever a statu­tory hol­i­day is com­ing up, stores post their open­ing hours way ahead of time, as if apol­o­giz­ing for hav­ing to close for a day. The evening before the hol­i­day in ques­tion, hun­dreds of peo­ple rush into super­mar­kets and stock up on non-perishable items such as chips, BBQ sauce, pops and frozen meals. It is as if the Ger­mans are tak­ing over the city. And the day after the hol­i­days, when the wartime-like shop­ping restric­tions are finally lifted, they shop their heart out, nos­tal­gi­cally remem­ber­ing the day when they almost ran out of food.

But rest assured: in the worst case sce­nario, there are always cor­ner stores, aka con­ve­nience stores. They are every­where: under a block of apart­ments down­town or in the sub­urb, on the free­way, nearby land­marks and on empty stretches of roads. Con­ve­nience stores are here to sell items you are likely to run off of at ungodly hours, such as milk, cig­a­rettes, toi­letry prod­ucts, gum, bread etc. There are one of the great things of North Amer­i­can life.

In France, the con­cept of the cor­ner store doesn’t really exist, and cer­tainly not in the form of chain stores such as 7/11. At most, in Paris, you can find what peo­ple unpo­lit­i­cally cor­rectly call “l’arabe du coin” (the Ara­bic cor­ner store). In other cities, you’d bet­ter not for­get any­thing dur­ing your reg­u­lar shop­ping trips: stores close early, period.

Con­ve­nience stores offer a fas­ci­nat­ing cul­tural win­dow on North Amer­ica. First, the demo­graphic: a large major­ity of con­ve­nience store employ­ees seem to be rel­a­tively new immi­grants, from all over the world. Sadly, the stereo­type of the for­mer engi­neer of doc­tor work­ing as a shop clerk is just too often true. And while there is noth­ing wrong with own­ing a con­ve­nience store, I’m pretty sure that work­ing there around the clock as an employee is not what most immi­grants had in mind before they came to Canada.

Sec­ond, con­ve­nience stores best-seller items cer­tainly tell a lot about the population’s tastes. While I can under­stand run­ning out of milk and bread (two items that fit with my Euro­pean taste), pop­u­lar items such as jerky (mar­i­nated dry meat) and slushie (flavoured frozen drink) baf­fle me. How­ever, you won’t be sur­prise to learn that a num­ber of con­ve­nience stores have a Tim Horton’s kiosk inside — this Cana­dian addic­tion fits anywhere!

Con­ve­nience stores also tell a lot about a country’s way of liv­ing and pas­times. For instance, I rarely see peo­ple buy­ing bus tick­ets (I always do), even though this is the most con­ve­nient place to get them. I guess Canada is a car cul­ture coun­try… How­ever, every time I go to the con­ve­nience store, there is some­one buy­ing lot­tery tick­ets: Canada’s two national lot­ter­ies, Lotto 6/49 and Lotto Max, are very pop­u­lar. And God for­bids you find your­self in line behind a lot­tery addict… val­i­dat­ing tick­ets and pick­ing new ones is a tedious process.

Hate them or love them, cor­ner stores are part of North Amer­i­can life. I had some deeply weird philo­soph­i­cal con­ver­sa­tions there. And they intro­duced me to a new coun­try and a new lifestyle. For that alone, I’ll keep on stop­ping by once in a while.

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