I wanted to comment on Consumer's Distributing. They weren't killed by Wal-Mart. They had major, major issues before Wal-Mart came on the scene in Canada.

I worked for Kodak Canada from 1989 to 1998, and Kodak was a big vendor for Consumer's Distributing. I heard some interesting stuff there. CD played hardball with their vendors. I heard some dirty stories about some of their business practices.

Anyway, they started to run into tough financial troubles before Wal-Mart was hardly a blip on the radar screen. They took longer and longer to pay. Their business practices caught up with them, and their vendors — sick of their garbage and already owed way too much — simply stopped sending them product. This wasn't easy to do. CD was big for Kodak, for instance. But in the end they figured they weren't going to get paid anyway, so no use throwing good money after bad. Down they went.

I have to say that I always preferred Shop-Rite, even though it died much sooner. They were owned by The Bay at the end, and (like The Bay when it first opened in Oshawa) Shop-Rite actually sold Avalon Hill wargames. That was cool!