Those stores you miss Sears

Loaded chains and brands have nonetheless disappeared, leaving behind priceless memories. Throughout the week, five of these stores are mentioned by our readers – more than 700 answered our call to all. Today: Sears.

“The Sears store, for me, is the concept of the general store of yesteryear, transformed into a department store, begins Roch Bouchard. Me, everything I needed, I could find it in this same place.

He speaks with knowledge.

The 77-year-old man has lived for nearly half a century in the small town of Sainte-Perpétue, the well-named, which perpetuates the tradition of the small general store where you can buy "bread, a pair of gloves leather, chicken feed, a generator…

However, it was with its catalogs rather than its stores that Sears came – early – into RochBouchard’s life.

His father, a CN locomotive engineer, landed in the communities where the collective agreement and the jostling of the seniority list propelled him.

"I was born in Rivière-à-Pierre because he worked there," says our man.

The family then settled in Fitzpatrick, near LaTuque, then in Senneterre, in Abitibi, before moving again.

The only common point, the only continuity, was attached to the Sears catalog, in which his mother made all her purchases.

Even the children's clothes were chosen on the basis of the illustration alone and purchased without fitting. “My mother would see the weight and size in the chart, she would go back to the garment page, and she would order it.”

Drying your roots at Sears

“I lived in several places in Quebec, and I didn’t really put down roots anywhere. From this point of view, Sears was a bit of a root, a landmark, because it was everywhere.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Roch Bouchard remained loyal to the brand when he moved to his wife's native village, shortly after their marriage. He anchored his purchases in the two nearest Sears stores, that of Trois-Rivières, on two levels, and that of Drummondville, smaller but closer.

“I bought everything.”

Really everything.

“I bought the kitchen sets, the living room sets, the bedroom furniture…”

And Kenmore appliances, of course. “The stove, the fridge, the washer, the dryer. They may be 40 years old, and it still works very well.”

Another well-known house brand, Craftsman tools have gradually filled his workshop.

"I bought I don't know how many tools at Sears. And even a garden tractor!”

A professional 26-horsepower tractor, he says. A beast… “I have never seen one, even at CanadianTire.”

It still lists televisions, small kitchen appliances, gardening tools.

Absolutely everything, except the food.

He even had his car serviced at the garage at the Sears store in Drummondville, where he could find tires and auto parts.

And of course, in all seasons, he was dressed at Sears from head to toe.

Because he had Sears under his skin.

An affective experience

“It’s not just consumer goods that I miss. It's the whole psycho-affective dimension, that is to say the subjective impression of being a real customer, with staff in the store who take care of the customer", he expresses with sensitivity and vocabulary that betrays his field of professional activity.

“And at the same time, I had this feeling of security that I couldn’t be wrong,” he adds.

These vast stores divided into well-defined departments, each populated by friendly clerks, gave him the feeling of being “practically in a general store of yesteryear”, he specifies, taking up his metaphor.

“The atmosphere and that feeling of confidence that you had when you walked into a Sears store, I did not find it.”

After the last Sears store closed, he realized he had lost his bearings when it came to buying clothes. He had to stretch his travels, multiply the traders, scatter his loyalty.

"Costco is not a customer experience, it's a warehouse employee experience," he says, without question.

“This is the metamorphosis that shopping has undergone in Quebec,” he concludes. “We went from a store like Sears, with a human dimension, to Amazon, which is a virtual experience.”

But Sainte-Perpétue and its irreducible general store are still resisting, as best they can, the invader.

Catalogs and life

Isabelle Roy also “misses Sears stores a lot, for several reasons”.

For the catalog, first, a repertoire of all nostalgia.

“In the 1970s, my mother, like many good mothers, was at home, without a car,” she says on the phone. We were four children. Often, she would order from the Sears catalog for Christmas gifts, everyday items. It was really helpful for her.”

At the time, Sears trucks delivered to homes. “For my mother, it was wonderful.”

However, she ran the terrible risk of her children witnessing the delivery of a gift intended for them.

This tragedy happened one day.

“I remember, it was a Christmas present. I was next. She said, "It's not for you, it's for the neighbor."

She believed him. "We believed our mother in those days."

Isabelle picked out her favorite toys in the catalog with pages as glossy as her dreams, then pointed them out to her mother.

"I played a lot with Barbies and I saw a big Barbie trailer," she says.

The toy vehicle – or recreational vehicle, it is also said – showed off a flamboyant lemon yellow and bright orange body.

“And I received it as a gift! I was the happiest in the world."

The vehicle suddenly transports her to another reminiscence: “I also remember my famous doll… Ah, my God!”

A forgotten world has just reappeared...

“Her name was Crissy. You pressed a button back and you could make her hair longer. I had seen it in the catalog too. I played with her so much!”

Worker at Sears

Becoming a student, Isabelle Roy worked for a few years as a cashier at the Sears store in the Galeries de Hull, as if to maintain the family tradition. “I made the kitchen items, the children's clothes. There was also a bulk candy counter. That, I remember very well.”

For very good reasons.

“At the end of the day, I always bought myself candy, because all day I had been serving it to customers.”

From his counter, the entire catalog of small schemes was unfolded before his eyes. “The lady who came to buy a dress on Friday and returned it on Monday”, she gives as an example.

Or this customer who came to replace her pushchair repeatedly. “There was always something wrong. After three strollers, she came back to say she no longer needed it and wanted a refund.”

The lady was pushing her luck a bit far, but the manager gave it to her anyway. "He said to her, 'I think you better go shopping somewhere else next time.'"

Without going so far as to say that it was a dream job, Isabelle worked at Sears in her pajamas.

"I don't think it was done in the Montreal area," she says. When I worked at Sears in Hull, during the holidays, there was a kind of sale, which was called something like Midnight Madness. They opened the store until midnight on Friday. It attracted people, it was crazy! We were allowed to put on our pajamas to go to work. At 11:30 p.m., there were still customers entering the store.”

Her children take up the torch

A young mother, Isabelle Roy continued to shop at Sears.

In turn, his two boys have taken up the torch and the catalog.

Fortunately, they never faced the Cornelian dilemma of two fascinating toys appearing on the back and front of the same page.

“They either stuck the picture on a piece of paper, or they stuck it on the fridge with magnets. Those are beautiful memories, and they stay! Especially with big magnets.

One of these wanted posters was for a police car that the youngest wanted to take in his handcuffs.

“There were three buttons, and each with a different siren. At the time, he wanted to become a police officer.

Three sirens: the howling, the strident and the tense.

Despite everything, the parents did not regret it.

“We had a thing for noisy toys. We put tape over the speakers. It was less noisy."

Anostalgia's competitors

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A little history of Sears

The small mail-order company Sears, Roebuck and Company was founded in Chicago in 1892.

His first store, opened in 1925, was followed by a plethora of Sears superstores as the suburbs developed.

Sears came to Canada in 1952 when it created a Canada-wide mail-order network with the Simpsons chain. The first Simpsons-Sears store opened the following year. The first Sears brand appeared in 1973. The partnership was dissolved when The Bay acquired Simpsons in 1978.

Both overtaken by Walmart, Sears and Kmart merged in 2005 under the Sears Holdings umbrella.

The recurring losses of the two chains and the controversial decisions of its main shareholder Edward Lampert led to the bankruptcy of Sears Holdings in 2018.

Itself grappling with significant liquidity problems, Sears Canada launched a first wave of closures in June 2017, with 2,900 job losses.

In October 2017, Sears Canada received court approval to sell its remaining assets, laying off an additional 12,000 employees. Its last stores closed in January 2018.