Big V

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• I miss the local Big V too, Lilly. They gave out great yearly calendars with pockets for receipts to be collected inside: madly practical. They also had good products, albeit somewhat overpriced. Still liked shopping there back in the day. Ah, memories.

• I used to work at the Pillette/Tecumseh location in the mid 80's. I drove a 'Big V' branded Chevy Chevette, delivering prescriptions.

  LILLY - I believe it was 'Valdy's' and there was one at Tecumseh & Jefferson as well.

• MIKE -- you can bet there will be a drive-thru. They wouldn't bother relocating if a DT wasn't part of the deal. Tim Horton's wants 60-75% of sales to come from the drive-thru so it would have to be a VERY special circumstance for them to build a non-DT store. I wouldn't be surprised to see a double-DT (like the Jefferson/Queen Elizabeth location) exiting to St.Louis. Hopefully it's just a rumour...

• I'm almost sure it was "Valdi's"....I remember the location on Tecumseh West from my childhood. It featured smaller than usual grocery carts and an unusually funky smell.

• It was straight up just called "Valdi" (a portmanteau of Value and Discount)...it was a Steinberg-owned chain, a discount cousin to Steinberg's larger Miracle Food Mart chain.

• The original drugstores that co-operated to start the Big V chain were Bryson's and Patterson's, both on Sandwich Street, at the corner and just west of Mill. I think there may have been a third partner but those are the stores I remember 'cause I was in them weekly with my parents.

  "CL" was, indeed, "Clearwater" and became "25" just as "Yorktown" (YO) became "96".

  "Valdi" was a new store as far as I'm concerned. I hadn't actually realized it was gone if it is! Don't think I was ever in one.

  In town last Saturday, I went by Sandwich and Mill for the first time in awhile and was amused to see an "IDA" drugstore in what was a "new" Shopper's while the "newer" Shopper's building sits vacant, I believe. There was a "new" CIBC (now also closed, I think) on the northeast corner to which the bank branch moved from their original location on the northwest. It seems to me that buildings and businesses used to last longer!

• I seem to remember a Valdi on Dougall, just south of the Zehr's.

• Valdi was very discount. Almost like a Costco today where you could buy in bulk (ie. cases of soup, pasta sauce, juice etc). I don't even think yoiu could get bags for the groceries. You either received boxes at tend of the check-out or brought your own boxes or bags.
  If I remember correctly there wasn't even produce.

• The only thing I remember about going to Valdi's is going there on a regular basis for a 1 pound bag of Garfield spicy nacho chips with a picture of Garfield sporting a sombraro. Whatever happened to that nacho brand?

• Big V was a Windsor success story. It was founded in 1964 when seven local independent pharmacists joined forces to stave off the threatening competition from the discount chainstores which were opening pharmacy departments. By merging forces the local druggists could match the purchasing power and advertising budgets of the giants. Under the banner of Big_V and a logo of a crusader bunny, the alliance, had grown to 135 stores in Ontario when it was sold to Shoppers Drug for $243 million in 1995. Big-V was owned by the member pharmacists and associates. A founder once told me there was an unnamed eigtht druggist in the original group but he decided to drop-out before the alliance was formed. Wonder what he thought, years later, about walking away from a share in an organization that became worth a quarter billion dollars?