It’s hard to keep up with the rate of change. The other day, a news report announced that Army and Navy stores were closing. 

            I remember Army and Navy as the place to go to get stuff cheap. The late Sam Cohen founded Army and Navy in Vancouver 101 years ago, as a war surplus outlet. The Great War was over. He could get goods at going-out-of-business prices; hence the Army and Navy title. 

            He soon moved out of war surplus, but maintained his motto: “Buy cheap; sell cheap.”.

            During my short years in sales, an awestruck co-worker told me about Cohen buying a whole trainload of wooden tent pegs – just when plastic tent pegs were coming in. 

            No one wanted wooden pegs any more, Cohen’s staff told him.

            Cohen’s answer -- tie them in bundles and sell them as firewood.

            “And he still made a profit,” my colleague burbled happily. “That’s the power of bulk buying!”

            Sam Cohen is gone, and so are his stores. His daughter and inheritor Jacqui Cohen blamed the restrictions of COVID-19. “We had too many goods to sell and no one to sell them to,:” she said. 

Widespread troubles

            The same week, news stories said the Reitman’s clothing chain was filing for bankruptcy. Even the survival of the venerable Hudson’s Bay Company was in doubt. 

            HBC is almost synonymous with Canada itself. The first Canadian limited-liability corporation, maybe the world’s first. Founded in 1670, before Canada was even a country. Opened the west to English trade. Made the world’s warmest blankets.

            I can no more imagine Canada happening without the HBC than without the CPR.

            These closures can’t all be blamed on COVID-19. The trend was there long  before. The department stores I grew up with – especially Spencer’s and Woodward’s in Vancouver – have all gone. 

            Sears Canada folded two years ago. Sears itself was descended from Simpsons, the department store competitor to Eaton’s, the granddaddy of Canadian catalog sales.

            At the same time, some retail chains have seen their sales soaring. Canadian Tire’s revenues dropped, but its online sales and pickups rose “20 to 30 times,” according to president and chief executive Greg Hicks. 

            “We believe COVID-19 has permanently shifted the shopping behaviour of many,” Hicks told the Globe and Mail. 

Too many, too fast

            It’s hard to keep up with the changes already happening, let alone with what may come. 

            I’ve written previously that I suspect many churches will close, even when COVID restrictions end. 

            The majority of regular attenders (and reliable supporters) are over 60. They come out every week because that’s what they’ve done, and were encouraged to do, all their lives.

            But for two months now, they’ve discovered they don’t have to come to church. There are higher priorities than gathering for worship.

            I wonder how many of those regular attenders will make the effort once gatherings are permitted again. 

            Universities have had to experiment with online teaching. Conventional lectures may go the way of Army and Navy. 

            And schools are re-opening. Sort of. Children will start going back to school in ten days. But school attendance will be optional, not mandatory. 

            This from a system that once employed truant officers to round up kids playing hookey, and that put Doukhobor children in an internment camp to make sure their parents couldn’t keep them from attending. 

            Teachers will certainly get the smaller class sizes they have lobbied for. Physical distancing will probably limit class sizes to under a dozen students, who attend only one or two days a week.

            I have a hunch that the education system may discover that children can learn as much in a single day when the teacher can give individual attention, as they can in a week when the teacher’s primary task is maintaining some semblance of order.

Lacking an advocate

            The COVID pandemic has also made us, as a society, re-think seniors’ care. Especially those seniors who lack a vigorous younger advocate to raise hell on their behalf. Our model of caring for helpless elders resembles an uncaring assembly line. They become objects, to be fed, cleaned, and left alone – out of sight, out of mind.

            I’m not surprised that 80% of COVID deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities. 

            My wife saw enough of that system with her aging aunts. That’s why she insisted that she wanted to die at home. 

            Army and Navy stores might have closed anyway. Education might have changed anyway. Long-term care might have changed. But much more slowly. COVID-19 has forced our hands.

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Copyright © 2020 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                       To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

I didn’t get many letters about last week’s column on vaccines. 

Tom Watson wrote, “I live in a 142-unit condo building. The elevators are limited to two people at a time. The other day, I got on one elevator. Two people walked toward it...the man got on...the woman waved us on. When the door closed, the man said, ‘My wife is just being silly.’ 

            “I asked what he meant. He replied, ‘She takes this stuff seriously. I'd sooner get the Covid-19, get over it, and then I'd be clear.’ 

            “My reply to that was, ‘If one person in this building gets it, we're all susceptible.’ 

            “There are two reasons we get vaccines. One is to protect ourselves. The second is to protect other people, so that we don't carry the virus to them.”

Laurna Tallman offered consolation for my comment about forgetting to do things: “The loss of one’s mate affects the brain like an amputation. I read years ago that it takes a partner about two years to recover from the partner’s death. I know it applied to me after the man I thought I would marry died young of a rare autoimmune disease. I thought it was taking me forever to heal but it seems I was right on schedule. 

            The same time frame holds for broken marriages and other major disruptions. That does not mean that the sense of loss and pain may ever stop entirely. That will depend on the individual’s brain integration ‘style’ and on other circumstances, such as age, the length of the relationship, the calls upon one’s attention, and how much you can accept of the kindness of others. 

            Laurna also referred to some of her own difficulties dealing with the current Covid restrictions: “I had a heightened ability to think and act for a few weeks and then entered a mental fog where I couldn’t make myself finish any of the usual business tasks including some very simple ones. Waves of physical fatigue would come and go, alarming in themselves; but the mental state was very unfamiliar and frightening. It is a type of PTSD. When the fog lifted, I was not immediately myself and probably am not yet. But I could tackle some of those jobs while being careful not to put myself under pressure. It was easier to do physical tasks than mental ones but I had to be careful there, too.” 

Isabel Gibson: “I'm watching to see what happens this fall with another vaccine -- the annual flu shot. Only about 1/3 of Canadians have been getting it, which as I understand it is enough to slow the flu's spread but not to achieve true herd immunity. I wonder whether this experience will persuade some who haven't bothered in previous years. 

            “I know how I'd promote it: ‘If you won't do it for yourself, do it for them.’  ‘Them’ being the old and frail.” 

            A letter writer (to the newspaper, not to me) scorned that annual flu shot as being only 50% effective. I wonder why he feels that protecting only 50% of the populace is worse than leaving 100% vulnerable. 

Bob Rollwagen commented on the race to develop a Covid vaccine: “It would be nice if it was January. The global co-operation is amazing and may lead to many new approaches with the doors that are opened. [Whenever it comes] the current president will claim to have discovered the best ever vaccine.”

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TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the ‘Reply’ button.

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                       And for those of you who like poetry, you might check my webpage https://quixotic.ca/My-Poetry. Recently I posted a handful of haiku, something I was experimenting with. If you’d like to receive notifications about new poems, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca, or subscribe yourself to the list by sending a blank email (no message) to poetry-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca (If it doesn’t work, please let me know.)

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PROMOTION STUFF…

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)

                       Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.

                       I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/

                       Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE

                       The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns.