When a community with a well-balanced commercial mix is targeted by a mega-corporation intent on wrenching market share away from businesses already established there, baneful events are certain to follow. Consumers in rural Saskatchewan are not privy to the criteria used by Wal-Mart in deciding what community it will raid next.
Unless they are deliberately blind, however, they can see that Wal-Mart’s rock-bottom price stickers don’t reveal the hidden costs.
Let’s not beat around the bush. The Kindersley Mall was a thriving venture, a proud centrepiece for a proud town. It is no coincidence that since Wal-Mart elbowed its way into Kindersley, the Mall has fallen upon evil days. There is always room on the Mall parking lot now. The place has been gutted. On the worst days, a walk in the Mall is a dismal exercise, almost like a visit to a mausoleum.
The flight of customers away from the Kindersley Mall is understandable. Saskatchewan people are bargain-hunters. Super-low prices attract them like flies to dirty diapers. In dealing with the corporate giant, however, there is more to consider than the obvious. Loyalties to former friends – to local businesses, to Canadian companies – should not be so easily abandoned. There is a principle involved. There is a moral dimension.
Wal-Mart is not, as some might think, a Chinese company. Its headquarters are still in the U.S., although it would seem most of its manufacturing facilities are in China. Most retailers in Canada stock Chinese-made goods. The difference is that Wal-Mart, being the biggest bully on the block, can force suppliers to drop their prices below those which other companies pay. Everybody is squeezed – producers, manufacturers, shippers, insurers and, finally, the mom-and-pop neighbourhood store in far away Canada.
The imbalance in trade is evident in the thousands of shipping containers which arrive in Canada filled with Chinese good and which never go back again because we have nothing to put in them.
Wal-Mart is the High Priest of the Consumer Society which has grown by leaps and bounds since the end of W. W. II. There aren’t very many around who remember the necessary frugality of the decade when economic and trade patterns were out of joint and black blizzards filled our noses, mouths and eyes with rich topsoil scoured out of dry fields. Then, survival meant having a place in a closed circle and having such business dealings as were possible with people who cared about each other and were loyal to each other.
In the days left to me, I don’t expect to see that kind of social organism come back again. I hope, however, that the worshippers of consumerism will finally come to the full realization that they are stealing the heritage of unborn generations.
In the meantime, regardless of higher costs and limited selection, I will deal with my friends. I won’t pass through the door of a company which intends to be the largest merchandiser in the world. Philosophers of ancient Greece valued the virtue of moderation is all things. The top dogs at Wal-Mart have no time for the old Greeks.
They never know when enough is enough.

William Wardill of Eatonia is still deeply involved with the prairie landscape he loves and with the community where he was born in 1927. Enjoy more of his work at speargrassspecialties.com.
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