Monday, April 26, 2010

COLES CLOSED, BOOKS BOXED

(I've been away from my Blog lately---so sorry. Detailed renovations, heavy yard work in Spring, and a delightful, unexpected family news which has rendered me a bit giddy.)

OK. Coles in the Sydney Shopping Center is now closed! That's NOT good. I have to TALK to Heather Reisman about this, but first I must explain the situation. In all Cape Breton we only have(had) TWO bookstores, and they are both Coles. One is in the Mayflower Mall, and one USE to be in the Shopping Center. They are doing extensive renovations to the Shopping Center and Coles announced it was closing for good. I'm upset---so are quite a lot of people around this fair Isle. I'm really upset because of the following:

For years I have been trying to get the ear of Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo/Chapters, to listen to me. This is what I was saying: Heather buddy, I'm no business man, BUT I think it would be a capital (pun on that word) idea to close both Coles stores and build a Chapters on Spar Road next to the WallyMart. Employ all the people there from the closed Coles. It would be an excellent addition to our thriving economy, and provide easy access to books for children and us old folks. in short it would be a really good thing to do. I've been saying that for years now, sending emails to her, blogged it one time, letters to the paper, and to anyone who is in ear shot. But to no avail. Heather. She doesn't answer. And then this happened:

When my wife and I were in Halifax this past month, I heard that there's going to be a new Chapters built at Dartmouth Crossing. Now, that would make THREE(3) Chapters in the Halifax/Dartmouth area---hardly fair. To add to this unsettling news, I found out that Coles is closed in the Shopping Center! Any visions of a Chapters here are fading quick. Good grief. This is bad news indeed.

I don't know Heather Reisman personally, but I'm beginning to believe that she is a mean person with no regard for Cape Breton. Hey, we're nice people, and we read books too, well, some of us...a lot of us.

You can order books on line though, and get them here within a week. From Chapters. But I like Amazon.ca better (Hear that Heather?!) But still it's not the same as perusing the aisles of clean, new, first editions in a well lighted store.
I'll say no more about this.

The second topic I wish to discuss is this: I(we) have about ten boxes filled with books sitting in the basement(recroom) with a stern order from my wife to turf them. They've been sitting there for a while now. But I've done this before, many times over the years. I've just given them to the library---CBU library, and the Regional. Sending clean, like-new, first editions to the library is akin to putting your favourite star-gazer lily in the compost. Ugh. But I've done it. But I'm not going to do it this time, and don't really know what to do with them. It would be nice to get some money for them, but that's not going to happen, I'm sure. I rarely make money on anything. During a Yard Sale one year, I was giving things away with a buy one get two logo. My wife told me it would be better overall if I just went inside the house during the sale. She tried to remind me that the reason for Yard Sales was to make money. Oh.

I actually don't mind sending the books on their way. I'm not a hoarder, and after awhile they begin to stack up. And my wife is such a clean and tidy person that if anythings lays about for a few hours unattended, she'll sweep it away out of sight to places you'll never think of looking. She's French Acadian, you see, and if you know anything about French Acadians you'll know that they are super clean. You'll be hard pressed to find a dirty house in Cheticamp. They also have that French temper, shhhh, we won't talk about that.

So. I still don't know what I'll do with those books. Maybe I'll send them to Heather! Yes! Good idea. She could send them on to one of the THREE(3)Chapters in Halifax. Oh brother.

Next: New novels just out.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Bernie (if I may be so familiar),

    I am very sorry to hear about how frustrated you are with the recent closure of our Coles location in Sydney - we know how important this store was to the community.

    At no point was it our decision to vacate this location but a by product of the mall going under a complete overhaul and rebuild. Due to our store being in the main area of the demise we were asked to return back the existing location to the landlord so they could start working on "our wing". With the entire center undergoing a transformation and not yet finalized we are awaiting a proposal to revisit a location in there.

    Any time we close a location it is tough for us but more so when the decision is out of our hands. A temporary location was not viable for a short period of time and we will continue to assess as progress occurs with the overhaul and update within the community to keep everyone appraised of next steps.

    While we know it is a small trip up to Mayflower we also know that with over 95 years of combined book selling experience Paula and her team are working very hard at helping with the transition for all of our regular shoppers. We have already had a few of our loyal Sydney customers pop up to introduce themselves to our Mayflower team.

    I hope these insights help to better provide context on the situation.

    Sincerely,

    Christine Bird
    Vice President
    Indigo Books

    P.S. There is no third Chapters store going into Dartmouth Crossing or anywhere else in Halifax we are thrilled with the existing locations both in our big box positioning as well as our Coles locations.

    Again sincerely,

    Christine

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