“All we want is an n even break,” said a spokesman for A&P. This was at a news conference announcing that his supermarket chain has joined Loblaws, Miracle, and Oshawa Group (IGA and Food City) to form something called the committee for Fair Shopping. The committee is going to lobby Ontario municipalities to permit supermarkets to open on Sundays.
Their arguments:
– Their stores are losing millions of dollars to small retailers who are allowed to sell groceries on Sundays
– Sunday is now the second-biggest shopping day in the U.S.
– Canadians close to border points flock to U.S. supermarkets on Sundays.
– Times are changing; for many people Sunday is just another day, and they want the right to shop on that day.
“Our sole purpose is to serve the public,” said Jonathan Wolfe of the Oshawa Group. “If they want us to be open, then we want to serve them.”
Grant Hopcroft, a London alderman who is president of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, said that the stores have a tough sell on their hands: “My sense is that not very many municipalities will opt for this. Once you permit the large food retailers to open, how do you reasonably refuse a request from any other member of the retail sector?”
Those pushing hardest for Sunday opening in Ontario and elsewhere are businessmen from the Jewish community. Paul Magder, the downtown Toronto furrier, has defied Ontario Sunday closing for years. Religious Jews who are shop owners, mostly Orthodox Jews, close their businesses on Saturday for the Sabbath. They are a relatively small group.
Secular Jews use this pretext to seek Sunday shopping days and break through the Christian tradition of keeping the Lord’s Day a day of rest. Recently, a Renfrew Roman Catholic, Tom Dicke, 39, 51 per cent owner of Giant Tiger Store and a prominent member of the local Knights of Columbus, decided to declare his firm Jewish. “The head office of Giant Tiger Stores Ltd.” (which owns 49 per cent of the local franchises), Dicke said, “mentioned there might be a loophole in the act, and I decided to try it.” (Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette.)
Needless to say, Dicke, who now closes on Saturday, has his excuses ready which explain why he feels “forced” to take this step (such as competition from discount stores open on Sunday). He represents the type of businessman the champions of Sunday shopping have been counting on to come to their aid in smashing Sunday rest. Hit them in the pocket book, however slight it may be, and they will come running.
Meanwhile, some of Dicke’s fellow parishioners no doubt, are among the Sunday shoppers who frequented his business rivals. And until all Christians are told that the time for compromise has run out long since and the time for sacrifice (and in this case even self-interest) has begun, the deterioration of sand and sensible laws such as closing Sundays will accelerate.
