There has been an announcement that our local Field’s Store in Comox is closing along with the rest of the stores in small town Canada.

In the local Comox mall there is a grocery store and a Government Liquor store, a drug store, but one of the base merchants was a Field’s store.

Field’s is a Canadian merchandise chain that goes back to 1950.  Stores in small town Canada that offered the open shopping experience for the growing wealth of the post war population.  Chains like Woolworths and Kresge’s and the Saan store.

Eatons, Simpsons, Sears and Hudson Bay would only build in big cities and sold their products by catalogue shopping to all the rural and small town people.  If you lived in small towns and wanted the experience of actually touching something before you purchased, you went to the small chain stores.

Over time the demand for lower cost made the chains sell out to bigger stores.  Woolworth’s became Woolco and failed,   Kresge became KMart and failed.

In Western Canada Field’s struggled on by staying in small towns including Comox which has only 8000 people.  But Comox is attached to Courtenay and Walmart came along with Costco and SuperStore.

The local Field’s store became a competitor with Dollarama and despite the loyalty of the owners and their aging staff they could not compete and now are closing.

I admit that I would drop in occasionally and buy something small, but despite my feeling of nostalgia for the chain, never truly supported it.

It is another example of the passing of time.