On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

The Bay was a retail fixture of my life. I didn't expect to outlive the company.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/hudsons-bay-8300-employees-june-1-1.7544639

Wallack's got back to me with an answer about the options they have either in stock or available to order:

Holbein (Japan)
Colleen Pencils (Thailand)
Bruynzeel (Holland)
Faber-Castell (Germany)
Caran d'Ache (Switzerland)
Derwent (UK)
Lyra (Germany)

I went for a walk, partly for exercise, partly for newspapers and other essentials-to-me.

The hand sanitizer apparatus at the local grocery and pharmacy were still out of order when I got there, the former for about a week now and the latter being hour-by-hour iffy.

I am pleased to note that my polite complaints about this were not met with indifference or disrespect. Both establishments took measures to either get the equipment working again or to provide a workable substitute system until repairs/resupply can be properly done.

Should I name these stores as examples of making positive efforts to assist their customers?

Keeping in mind these are the locations within walking distance of where I live currently...and things may already be changing for the better (I hope).

Metro
Canada Computers

Shoppers seemed to get better as the day went on yesterday. I have to allow for them because I showed up right at the start of their work day at 8 AM. But the people at the pharmacy section were already masked at that point, so...?

We're still not out of this yet, and I don't care for the howls of the "skeptics". Especially after the last two years.

I got my debit card PIN problem fixed up at the bank. (Sadly, this is an issue that has to be fixed in person, one of the few banking issues that has to be fixed that way.)

I used some Christmas gift-money to buy a personal DVD copy of Black Widow.

There was reassurance that my local comics dealer is still operational, and was able to reassure the staff that I have not forgotten my obligations to them. More pointedly, that I anticipate starting to get caught up on my reading next weekend because payday timing.

The local custom-t-shirt printer can work with PNG files I bring for them, and that they can print on 3XL t-shirts.

The British mystery novels that inspired the CBC TV series Coroner are still in print as of two years ago, and available through local booksellers.

It may be possible for me to finally get a used Wacom Cintiq without breaking myself financially. More on this anon, I hope.

New battery for the cell-phone, finally. Been worrying about the battery I bought with it for a few weeks after four or five years. Didn't think the shop I bought the new battery from would have it in stock yet.

I went to Perfect Books this morning, having pre-paid, to pick up Stumptown V.4 and ST:DSC Wonderlands. Both books were pretty much as I expected them to be, hence worth the money and time to get them.

The trip was mildly eventful because of the weather. The trip from home to downtown requires switching from bus to train at Blair Station these days, and the rain that was being given 40% odds of happening by Environment Canada fully happened during the train ride. The "wave" passed over my route when I was between Cyrville and Tremblay Stations and left me behind when I got to UOttawa Station and - at that point - off the train.

Finally got the transit pass updated for this month - thanks again for the current unemployment insurance rules, federal government, or that (and much of my current ability to keep looking for work) might not be possible! - after I got there.

Looking at the Rideau Canal as I crossed the Corkstown Footbridge connecting the University of Ottawa's Sandy Hill campus with the "Golden Triangle" section of Centretown, I saw...a lot of underwater plant life blooming. I think that's normal most years, but with canal boat traffic largely shut down because of the Pandemic (like so much else), the greenery comes right to the surface in much of the canal that I was able to see.

Perfect Books is in the midst of an upgrade of sorts. Their longtime next-door neighbour, Elgin Jewellers, has shut down in part due to Pandemic and partly because the owner was already thinking of retiring. That decision opened up an opportunity that the bookstore has taken advantage of: to double their then-current floor-space. They'd already been managing to weather the Pandemic "storm" - and the reconstruction of Elgin Street over the year prior to the Pandemic's beginnings - fairly well due to bulk-order business, a devoted long-time walk-in clientele willing to pivot with them, and other factors. So owner Jim Sherman's taking this chance. I'd really like this to work out for him and his staff.

Maybe it's because of the binge-reading of the Retail comic strip series' archives these past few days, but I'd like to see independent bookstores - and other retailers - be able to keep going, and maybe a little bit of careful growth, too.

And that leads me to my next reiteration: that we need a better "new normal" to move into from these Pandemic times. I worry that we're not going to get that better "new normal" because of far too many reasons right now.

Norway adds trans people to the "protected" list in their hate-crime laws.

https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-lgbt-lawmaking/norway-outlaws-hate-speech-against-trans-people-idUSKBN2852DL

CBC reporter Anthony Germain learns lessons about addiction.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/germain-pointofview-brothers-1.5852908

Baltimore Sun reporter David Zurawik on the need for a proper post-mortem among journalists in the wake of the Trump "Administration":

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/zurawik/bs-ed-zontv-trump-media-no-mercy-20201222-twriwoeftncvtc7vy7u6pldqj4-story.html

A boon of sorts for some of the bookstores I deal with:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/bookstore-business-rises-during-lockdown-1.5837661

Three of the Montréal shops aligned with the Montréal + Ottawa Comiccons are jointly setting up a web-retail arm:

https://comiclist.ca/

There's a magazine about Canadian comic books, Canadian SF&F in general that you might be interested in supporting:

http://sequentialpulp.ca/sequential-magazine/

Don Gorman at RMBooks apparently worked up this project on Google Maps.

If you're in Orléans, the east end of Ottawa outside the Greenbelt, you might mistakenly believe that there's not much in the way of art-skills learning in this borough. The good news is that "mistakenly" adverb choice is on-target.

The Apartment 613 arts and culture weblog has a profile on the Ottawa School of Art's Orléans Campus at the Shenkman Arts Centre.

An additional thought: in recent years, the photography equipment retail chain Henry's and the Ottawa-headquartered art supply store Wallack's retreated from Orléans for financial reasons. I would argue that putting their stores at the corner of Innes and Tenth Line - at the opposite side of the borough from "the Shenkman" - was a mistake. As was the later retreat. The Orléans Town Centre Mall, clustered around the Cinestarz Orléans cinema and right across the street from "the Shenkman" and ten minutes away from Place d'Orléans Mall, might have been a better venue for both retail operations. There was enough empty space in the Town Centre to serve them both.

Now? Not so much. The empty space seems to be more available at Place d'Orléans nowadays. If Henry's and Wallack's were to return to the east end...