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Nordstrom is withdrawing from Canada. At the risk of being branded an elitist, I must say I am going to miss them.

Some retail analysts, as well as actual and prospective customers, have opined that Nordstrom was never a good fit for Ottawa, or even for Canada in general. But looking at the major purchases I've made there over the past 8 or 9 years, I would have to dispute that contention.

Probably the priciest item I bought there was my heavy-duty Outdoor Survival Canada coat. It's practical, well-made, machine-washable, and has kept me toasty warm in the most severe weather Ottawa has on offer. I also wore it on a trip to Iceland for a nordic noir literary convention. Unless we're talking Alaska, I don't think most residents of the U.S. would get a lot of wear out of it.

Then there's my Canada Goose jacket. It's not a really heavy duty one. It's ideal for this kind of in-between, winter-into-spring weather we get so much of here. It's warmer than a K-way or a windbreaker but not quite as warm as my ski-jacket. It's made in Canada. It would also be useful in many climates in many other parts of the world.

Then just last month, before I had any inkling that the Rideau Centre Nordstrom's might be closing, I bought a pair of Manitobah Mukluks there. I wanted a pair of low-rise, pull-on boots for those days when it seems overkill to bundle my feet into my lace-up Pajar Canada boots with the tuck-away crampons in the soles. These Manitobah Mukluks were made of plum-coloured suede that was almost the exact same shade as my ski jacket.

Those who say Nordstrom's isn't a good fit for Ottawa generally rely on the argument that their prices are too high and Ottawa lacks that critical mass of filthy-rich people you might find in other larger urban centres. Certainly they do carry some designer goods at eye-popping prices, but there's still plenty on offer in more moderate price ranges. And they do have sales occasionally, too.

One thing I really liked about them was their food and beverage services: a coffee bar on the main level and the Bazille full-service restaurant upstairs. On weekends, Bazille offered both lunch and brunch and their menus were pretty creative and vegetarian-friendly.

The one thing I won't miss about the store is their Nordy Club loyalty program. In order to participate, you had to own a cell phone. In order to get those Nordy notes, you had to text something back to them. Goodness knows why they couldn't just e-mail them to you once you accumulated enough points. I did manage to get a couple of them over the years but it was kind of an ordeal and I'm sure it must have turned off a lot of Nordstrom's well-heeled but techno-averse and privacy-conscious customers.

Of course the pandemic accounted for a lot of the failure of Nordstrom to make a go of it in Ottawa. Public servants no longer flocked downtown to work every day. People forsook bricks-and-mortar retail outlets in favour of online shopping. Another factor I haven't seen mentioned so far is the LRT. When the Rideau Centre Nordstrom's first opened, people taking public transit to downtown destinations caught buses that stopped on the Mackenzie King bridge, right in front of the store. Even if they arrived quite early, they could still grab a coffee at Nordstrom's coffee bar, which opened before regular store hours. If you wanted to go to anywhere in the Rideau Centre or By Ward Market and you were coming by bus, you pretty much had to walk through or past Nordstrom's.

But then the LRT opened and most buses no longer went downtown or across the Mackenzie King Bridge. The new transit stop was Rideau Station, at the other end of the shopping centre, in the depths of the tunnel under the Rideau Centre / By Ward Market area. There was no longer so much foot traffic at the Mackenzie King end of the shopping centre and Nordstrom's was no longer a place you might browse in through happenstance on your way to somewhere else.

Downtown shopping (or any shopping, for that matter) is not what it used to be, a few short years ago.
I wonder what will replace Nordstrom's?

If we're talking luxury department stores, I'd love to see Holt Renfrew return to Ottawa. Preferably one with its own café, like the one in Toronto. I miss Eaton's too, which was bigger than Nordstrom's and more of a real department store, if less luxurious than a Nordstrom or Holt Renfrew. Simon's has been talked about, but there's already a Simon's in the Rideau Centre. And maybe we could look at Les Ailes de la Mode, which enjoyed a brief career at Bayshore shopping centre.

I guess the department store is a dying breed. Sears is gone, as are Eaton's and Ogilvy's and Murphy Gamble and Morgans. The only real department store we still have in Ottawa now is The Bay, and even they are largely owned by American interests, despite their illustrious history.

Ideally I'd like to see a truly Canadian department store take its place. But if not, maybe we could look east rather than south? Perhaps a Harrods or Selfridges or John Lewis or Laura Ashley or Marks and Spencers? Or a Quelle or Kaufhof? I'm sure there are lots of possibilities out there!

Ontario will go into lockdown on Boxing Day. It will last for 28 days in the south (including Ottawa and the rest of the Eastern Ontario region) and 14 days from Sudbury to the northern border.

So is Ontario still ours to discover? Not so much. Is it a place to stand and a place to grow? Well, it seems that those blue-plate specials with the newer slogan on them were recalled for being illegible. And there are plenty of people around who can't stand Doug Ford, particularly in Ottawa. With one hand he virtually pats us on the head and tells us we're doing great at observing the health and safety rules while with the other, he signs orders putting us into lock-step with Toronto's shutdown.

Having said all that, I'll concede that it will not make a huge difference to my life as I know it and have lived it since March 2020. I'm somewhat relieved that the lockdown does not start on December 24 as many were expecting. In some quarters, of course, people are saying that it should have started even earlier than that.

The main rationale for including Ottawa in the lockdown is to prevent would-be Gatineau Boxing Week sales-goers from flocking across the bridges into the Ottawa shopping malls, their viral droplets in tow. But honestly folks, who knows what Legault & Co will decide to do next? Prediction is a fool's errand and our rules and regulations have never been completely in harmony with each other.

In Ottawa, restaurateurs will be particularly hard hit. I feel for those who had already lost out on office Christmas parties and then spent a whack of time and money assiduously planning Covid-safe New Year's Eve parties, thinking they could at least recoup a few of their losses from what has been a disastrous year for them. Will they be able to access enough in compensation packages to enable them to survive into 2021?

One can only hope.

This morning was our day for the early morning biweekly grocery expedition.

As tends to happen in early November, no sooner have we finished with Halloween than the Christmas supplies start to populate store shelves. And this year, we are being urged to shop early, though in rather different ways from what we may be used to.

It was rather sad seeing the amount of leftover Halloween candy at Loblaws. I guess that's down to families being asked to skip trick-or-treating and parties. While individual households no doubt bought some for their immediate bubble, you only need so much for that. And with so many people working from home now, they don't have the option of bringing leftovers to work so their colleagues can help themselves. I guess one good thing about it is that people only buy the candy that they know they and their family like and can eat. So there's less waste, perhaps, and no worries about your kids finding razor blades in apples and cyanide capsules in candy.

I did pick up a few supplies for Christmas baking, though goodness knows to what extent we'll be allowed to share it with others - we may have a very full freezer come January! On the other hand, I've not yet seen any nice crates of mandarins or clementines, only the small bags.

Generally the shelves were fairly well stocked today, although they were still rationing their paper towels. They also had some bamboo-based toilet tissue (not sure if I can call it paper, since they were boasting that it contained no trees - though isn't bamboo a tree of sorts?)

One thing I usually look forward to in November is wandering around craft shows and church bazaars. I guess there won't be any of that this year, but in the interests of supporting local crafts people, I may do some of my gift shopping on sites like this one:

https://ottawaartisans.com/collections/

My big adventure for today was to take the bus to Billings Bridge for some pandemic-era shopping. My last bus trip was 6 weeks ago; I haven't braved the LRT since March. This was also my first visit to an indoor mall since March.

You know, until some time in the mid to late 60s, there was no such thing as an indoor mall in Ottawa. I believe St. Laurent was the first one that was actually built that way. After that and throughout the 70s, they started building walls around the outdoor malls (what we might nowadays call "strip malls" although some were fairly big and had anchor stores like Ogilvy's or Freiman's and major grocery stores like Loblaws as well as "dime stores" like Woolworth's). It probably made sense given our harsh winter climate and with a growing population of shoppers, it had the added benefit of allowing stores on BOTH sides of a centre aisle (and later, additional aisles and alleyways too) as well as centralized services like coat checks, lost and found and information booths. And the rest is history! We got benches and food courts and fountains that encouraged shoppers to linger and spend more money and buy more stuff they didn't need. As long as it wasn't teenagers looking to just hang out with their friends and escape parental supervision and disapproval, the merchants were happy.

They sure weren't ready for Covid-19. Now it's the stores with direct street or parking lot access that have the real advantage. With masking and physical distancing restrictions in place, nobody wants customers to linger. We're barely allowed to stop at a bench to rearrange our purchases. We certainly are not encouraged to use washrooms or drinking fountains or - shudder - mingle at a food court or relax in a wifi-enabled café or restaurant! But I digress.

Billings Bridge was once a respectably sized strip mall anchored by a Woolworth's and an Ogilvy's, with a couple of grocery stores, clothing stores, a bank, a Birks and a Davis Agency (which also sold 45's and a small selection of LPs). Nowadays it's an indoor mall with many more stores and services, most of which were shuttered for several months and have only recently re-opened. I'd say about two-thirds of the stores were open when I was there. I went to the bookstore, the drugstore, the grocery store and the LCBO. The Laura Secord was open and was still flogging Easter candy. The Reitman's was open and was advertising some deep discounts but will soon close for good (I believe it was one of the original stores there, too). Of course, they all require that you wear a mask, follow the arrows, respect the little footprints painted on the floor to ensure appropriate distancing, use their hand sanitizer, don't pay with cash and so forth.

In spite of my grumbling, I found it a rare treat to actually browse in a bookstore for the first time in months. I browsed their mystery and magazine sections and bought a couple of puzzle books. At the Rexall there I managed to find a couple of packages of disposable masks - just in case. And at the grocery store I found lemonade and soy sauce and a block of parmesan, none of which were in stock at our local Loblaws earlier this week. So all in all, it was a productive shopping trip.

It was a reasonably good day and time to go, too. My bus trip was free, the weather was not too bad, the stores were not that busy. But I was glad to get back home too - it's tiring to have to go through all the additional steps and procedures just to accomplish basic tasks.