by Lyonel Doherty

As a little girl, Sherilee Duncan recalls the excitement of getting five cents from grandma to buy a bag of candy at Eastside Grocery.

Now, she finds herself torn with her decision to close one of the last corner stores in Oliver.

She and husband Tom are moving on in life.

“So, you’re shutting her down. Retiring, eh?” one customer asked.

“I wish . . . not a chance,” Sherilee said emphatically.

After five years of sharing a piece of history, the couple are seeking other adventures. Tom is going back to work for V-Line Construction and Sherilee is seeking work up north.

“It was a hard decision to make because I knew what we would lose – the old corner store,” Sherilee said.

She acknowledged that a lot of people are disappointed about the closure. The Duncans aren’t actually selling the store, they are just selling what’s in it until the last day, which is tentatively January 31. Their hope is to lease the building.

Eastside Grocery was built in 1948, with its timbers supplied by the Oliver sawmill. Today, these timbers are still rock solid.

The store opened in 1949, selling all kinds of goods including bread, meat and vegetables. But most importantly to kids like Sherilee, it had a wide assortment of penny candy.

She remembered walking on the hard-packed road to Eastside, which in those days was surrounded by orchards. It was the only commercial piece of property that supplied groceries to families on this side of the bridge.

“It was always busy with people. I remember as a little kid the shelves were stocked to the top and boxes (of goods) were piled high.”

In her teens, Sherilee would take a quarter and buy a popsicle (five cents), a bag of chips (seven cents) and a pop for about 12 cents. What a deal!

Fast forward to 1982, when Sherilee and Tom got married. Their two children went to Tuc-el-Nuit school and loved stopping at Eastside Grocery for a slushie.

When the store came up for sale, their kids urged them to buy it because it had the “best slushies in the world.”  So they bought it in 2007.

Sherilee said the store was run down and took a lot of work to get back into shape. “We saw the potential to take it back to a corner store, where the kids would come and eat ice cream.”

The stairs going down to the basement are still the original “creaky” stairs, and the original delivery chute is still used to receive goods from suppliers.

During the first two years the store was a real gathering spot for families who came to the store for ice cream every night after dinner.

Sherilee will never forget one evening when one family saw another family and stopped in for ice cream. Within a short period of time, there were more than 50 people in the parking lot. A similar gathering was witnessed during last year’s fundraiser for heart transplant patient Brittany Michaud. “I was dumbfounded how many people were here. I showed the spirit in the community.”

The store had its good times, but now it’s time for something different, Sherilee said. She will miss a lot of her customers that she grew up with, particularly one lady who phoned to say how upset she was about losing her grocery store, which she patronized for 35 years.

When Sherilee looks back, she sees the history of corner stores fading into oblivion. She has noticed the change in Oliver with the new kid on the block – corporate chain stores.

She has also noticed that small stores have lost the loyalty that kept them in business for years.

“Neighbours used to support each other, but we have taught our kids that the dollar is greater than loyalty.”

For example, people will spend the extra fuel to drive to town to buy a product that’s a little cheaper than the same product at the corner store.

But she doesn’t have to worry about it anymore because she’s nearing the end of that chapter and starting another.