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By Mel Rothenburger

Armchair Mayor

ROTHENBURGER: Without fries and gravy, can the new version of Zellers bring back the feeling?

Feb 11, 2023 | 6:39 AM

HOW CAN ANYONE FORGET sitting in The Skillet enjoying a Z-Burger, milkshake and Golden Fries with gravy? Anyone of a certain age, that is?

Ever since the recent announcement that Zellers will be brought back as a “store within a store” at a couple of dozen Bay stores, including Kamloops, there have been demands that The Skillet (it was later renamed Zellers Family Restaurant) be part of the package. To this day, I seldom pass up gravy on my fries when the opportunity presents. Zellers gravy was on just about everything the café served, as I recall. If memory serves, they put out a pretty good hot chicken sandwich, too. With gravy.

It doesn’t look like The Skillet/ Family Restaurant will reappear, though. At first, the company kept us in suspense with a “You’ll have to wait and see” teaser but then announced the old menu will be back — in food trucks. For a limited time.

While we remember those fries and gravy, we also remember the day the Zellers in Northills Shopping Centre was shut down. That decision was universally denounced for taking a thriving shopping fixture away from the North Shore in favour of focusing on the Sahali Mall location.

Turned out the South Shore wasn’t nearly as faithful as the North, and soon enough, Zellers was no more in Kamloops. No more in Canada, for that matter.

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It’s been 10 years since Zellers was a household name. Department stores are like law firms — constantly changing names and owners. They open, they’re bought out or absorbed by somebody else, they close. Life goes on.

Target, which moved into the old Zellers space in Sahali, was supposed to revive the Zellers piece of the market, but it never caught on here, nor in the rest of the country for that matter.

Before that it was Woolco, a discount department store owned by Woolworth and eventually bought out by the Walmart company.

Codgers like me well remember when Woodwards was a big deal in what is now the B.C. Lottery Corp. building. If I’m not mistaken, there was a great donut shop at the top of the escalator.

“Dollar 49 Day, Tuesday! Dollar 49 Day, Woodwards!” Or was it the other way around?

And there was Woolworth’s (F. W. Woolworth, to be exact) on Victoria Street in the 500 block. It was kind of a downscale Woodwards, more of a variety store than a department store.

Kmart, a division of the Kresge chain, ruled the roost here for many years. Its big store in Valleyview had just about everything, from kitchen gadgets to clothing, power tools and much more. And, it, too, had a restaurant. It was called Holly’s.

Not only that, but it had the Blue Light Special. There was a little cart that moved around the store; every once in a while the blue light lit up, a siren went off and an announcement would come over the PA system, “Attention, Kmart shoppers!”

And people came running to see what was on sale.

But, alas, Kmart disappeared, too, it’s premises taken over for a while by a call centre and then divided up into Peavy Mart and Princess Auto.

Sears anchored one end of the old Thompson Park Mall — that’s where we all had our kids’ pictures taken, cheap — before it moved to Aberdeen, where it eventually ran out of steam.

Before TP Mall, though, Kamloops was actually the second city in Canada to get a Simpsons-Sears store, in 1953. I don’t know where that one was but maybe somebody can tell us.

Who have I missed? Fields? Eatons? Eatons was once the biggest retail chain in Canada. You could even order a house from them. When it went under in 1999, Sears Canada bought up the assets.

Keep in mind, there have always been two main types of department stores: the more upscale, like The Bay, and the discount kind, like Zellers. I used to work in a Bay store. Mind you, it was after the Bay had left the building and The Daily News moved in.

The ownership and names of chains are too dizzying to follow. If I’ve forgotten any of them, or misspoken, let me know.

Whether the new iteration of Zellers will succeed remains to be seen. When Sears closed here a few years ago, I wrote that we the consumers had become too lazy to go out and shop.

There’s a lot of nostalgia tied up in department stores, though. We’ll await with anticipation the return of Club Zed points and “the lowest price is the law.”

But Zellers is no longer a Canadian icon. Along with The Bay, it’s now in American hands, just like Tim Hortons. This new Zellers might help out The Bay and I don’t want to rain on the parade but I wonder if it can bring back the feeling.

Especially without the fries and gravy.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops, alternate TNRD director and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.