Mulroney, 7-Eleven and the beginning of the end
How big-box hell got a hold of us
BY Dave Bidini
Photograph from Flickr by nickyfern
In the summer of 1984, a green and red 7-Eleven—glassy, bright, unblinking—appeared along Islington Avenue in west-end Toronto. It was the first store of its kind in our borough. It was partly a blight because of its brightness. Before Coffee Time and Burger King and Starbucks figured out that people, like moths, are drawn to fluorescence—then repelled by it twenty minutes later—the lights of the 7-Eleven shone at nighttime while the rest of the neighbourhood dimmed. Even the nearby strip mall—whose teen tide made it easy for the new variety store to find its crowd—darkened after 9 pm, but the 7-Eleven’s luminescence splashed across hedgerows and driveways. At first, I thought it was part of a publicity initiative rather than an aesthetic: keep the lights on to make a strong impression. But the brightness never faded, and never will. At least not until the overlords rain blood and rats on the store’s roofing.
The 7-Eleven plunked across the thoroughfare like a fat uninvited cousin until it was joined, in succession, by other American fast-food superchains, video rental depots and mega-supermarkets, all of which came in time. This was before everything else rolled in: Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Costco. Even though handguns and crystal meth and digital zombie children make the store’s influence seem less savage, I blame it for greater suburban dissolution because it was the first, having sustained in the way that cockroaches and acne and infomercials have. Now, my youthful memories of places like Drugtown—the pharmacy in the nearby strip mall where my girlfriend palmed yellow jackets and black beauties for mod dances at the Dash Baget Temple on Claremont Street—are mollusked to thoughts of the first 7-Eleven. Yet investment bankers grow dewey while passing it in their SUVs.
Once, at a 7-Eleven in Winnipeg, my friend Kenny Waldhauser and I met two Nicaraguan dudes in the middle of the night. They whispered something in Spanish to Ken, then pulled out a gold statue with “TO JIMMY: DICKIE DEE SALESMEN OF THE YEAR” plaqued below it. They thought it was a valuable token, and told Ken that we could have it for cheap. I felt bad for Jimmy because someone had stolen his trophy, and bad for the Nicaraguans, who were so broke they had to steal useless junk. Since they were new to Canada, they couldn’t tell the difference between something that was worthy and unworthy. But at least Jimmy got to have Slurpees after hockey practice. And the Nicaraguans had a place to hang out and sell shit to musicians.
I’ll always associate Brian Mulroney with the pre-big-boxing of Canada because it was during his stand as Prime Minister that our 7-Eleven first appeared. Mulroney loved Ronald Reagan, which only fed my suspicion that American culture was coming hard. I wrote a song about it—“Brian Mulroney, You’re the Reason I Must Go”—but I can’t play it anymore because he eventually left power and I never left Canada. But Mulroney’s free trade initiative—won along with his second resounding electoral triumph—opened the door, and ever since, truckloads of crap have paraded through our neighbourhoods across oceans of pavement into scenery-chewing buildings. Watching Mulroney peer out at the edges of the Schreiber affair—his eyes weary with the tired realization that his reputation still hangs in the balance 20 years after his reign—I was reminded of the first crack in our neighbourhood’s veneer the way one remembers a crummy birthday, or what silence sounds like right before someone delivers bad news. A lot has made been recently about Mulroney’s legacy in the face of these hearings, but in my old neighbourhood, change happened before anyone even knew to call it that.
