sunday shopping

holly golightly wrote:I try not to shop on Sundays as I still feel it is a family day/day of rest and the people who are working are missing out on spending time with their families.

holly golightly wrote:I try not to shop on Sundays as I still feel it is a family day/day of rest and the people who are working are missing out on spending time with their families.

casualchris wrote:Shops should be allowed whatever hours they want to keep, if there's customers and workers, why prohibit that transaction? because of church?

Deank wrote:":. And if I happen to hold the door for a group of say 7 people, maybe 2 will say thank you, sometimes none"


odd, everyone always says thank you to me.

The efforts of business lobbyists to push the provincial government to withdraw Sunday shopping restrictions on Boxing Day have literally paid off, in apparently huge retail sales.

Whether the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce succeeds in using the spending on Dec. 26 as a solid argument in favour of all-day shopping on Sundays year-round is another matter.

At Advance Electronics on Sunday, shopper Bob Bidder said it’s time for the province to relax its restriction that generally limits retail hours to noon to 6 p.m.

“It’s nice to be able to do some shopping on Sunday,” Bidder said. “You’re working five days a week anyway, so it’s nice to have that second day to come out.”

The province made an exception on operating hours for this Boxing Day, allowing retailers to open early, as they would when the holiday falls on any other day of the week.

Deborah Green, general manager at Polo Park Shopping Centre, said the Boxing Day crowd at the mall was as large and enthusiastic as in previous years.

“Whether people would shop at 8 or 9 a.m. on a regular Sunday, I can’t speak on that one. I just know that Sundays are a very busy day for us in general. They’re probably easily as busy as Saturdays now,” she said, declining to give an opinion on what the Manitoba government should do.

Chamber of Commerce vice-president Chuck Davidson could not be reached Sunday for comment. He pointed out to the Winnipeg Sun recently, however, that the province’s stand on this Boxing Day is dramatically different than in 2004, when the holiday last fell on a Sunday.

On Dec. 26 of that year, “government officials were outside a number of stores, making sure they didn’t open their doors,” Davidson said. “We’re talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on the overall retail economy just for this one day.”