Walking Through a 1989 Zellers — Aisle by Aisle

Saturday, the 4th of November, 1989. A week before Remembrance Day. Ten in the morning, in a parking lot at the end of a mall, with wet snow on the asphalt and a long red sign you could read from the far end of the lot. Just inside the doors, beside the gumball machines, an old man in a blue blazer and a beret is sitting at a card table with a tray of poppies and a row of medals on his chest. Before the day is out, he is going to do something that nobody in this store will notice except one child. This was the store most of us grew up in. One floor, acres of it, a restaurant by the door, a layaway counter at the back, and a slogan every kid in the country could recite. We walk through it in the order you would actually have walked through it, aisle by aisle. Hot turkey sandwiches and fries with gravy at the restaurant counter. The Club Z catalogue, and the points you saved for years. Hairspray, home perms and flavoured lip balm on a string. Acid-wash jeans, scrunchies and one-piece snowsuits. Halloween candy at half price on one side of the aisle and Christmas lights going up on the other. Washer fluid and block heater cords. A small grey handheld game under glass that nobody understood yet. And the layaway counter, where Christmas went on a shelf with a ticket stapled to it. Where the lowest price is the law. We are not skipping an aisle. If you remember a Saturday at Zellers, tell us in the comments what town it was and what you ordered at the restaurant. Somebody watching this was sitting in the next booth. Next week: a Consumers Distributing in 1984, counter by counter.