Local shops and local bike delivery
La Presse has a list of businesses selling local products, and the Journal interviewed a woman doing deliveries by bicycle. La Presse also describes the bicycle delivery services that are available. The city is supporting these services.
Daniel 16:06 on 2020-04-14 Permalink
We have been getting deliveries from Chez Nino in the Jean-Talon market and they’ve been great. We have also had delivery from Arhoma — they not only sell bread and pastries, but some raw ingredients such as flour.
Ian 11:18 on 2020-04-15 Permalink
Remember when every dep had some teenager that did deliveries by bike? With the big dep bike parked out front? I wonder what happened to all of them…
Kate 11:37 on 2020-04-15 Permalink
Ian, I remember them well. When I was a kid, every corner store had one. Their use declined gradually over the years, presumably because more and more of their customers had cars so didn’t need to have their beer and smokes delivered.
Some local shop must have produced those black delivery bikes, because they were a pretty uniform model all over town. I don’t remember seeing any news item about production ending, but that was probably well before this blog began. The last few stores I noticed having them, the bikes weren’t in the greatest shape.
(I also recall my mother pointing them out and saying that when she was young, some families (implication: francophone families) encouraged their sons to quit school and work doing delivery, and wasn’t I lucky that I was allowed to go to school.)
Blork 11:57 on 2020-04-15 Permalink
For context: a couple of dep delivery bikes on rue Ontario circa 1987:
https://www.blork.org/mondaymorning/index.php?showimage=14
Raymond Lutz 12:34 on 2020-04-15 Permalink
Also: the sound of empty beer bottles rattling in their case, when the bike was coming back from delivery.
MarcG 12:42 on 2020-04-15 Permalink
There are still lots of these in Verdun
Kate 13:01 on 2020-04-15 Permalink
Raymond Lutz, that’s almost Proustian.
MarcG: I must go for a walk around there again, sometime.
Raymond Lutz 13:32 on 2020-04-15 Permalink
À la recherche du temps de mon enfance. 😎
Another memory from those years: the young boys waiting outside Dominion or Steinberg, bringing back mom’s grocery paper bags with their small wheel-cart for 25¢
Kate 14:45 on 2020-04-15 Permalink
Paper bags were en consigne?
Raymond Lutz 15:13 on 2020-04-15 Permalink
Non, c’est quand on revenait de l’épicerie: les p’tits gars étaient là pour aider les gens à retourner chez eux avec leurs sacs pleins. Lower middle class workers didn’t have SUVs back then (do they now?)