Uncovering Burnaby: When 6-day shopping weeks were legalized

Few people alive would remember when a six-day shopping week was any kind of controversy.

Today, with online shopping, you can buy just about anything at just about any time (though you’ll probably still struggle to buy a PlayStation 5 anytime soon.)

Let’s say you get a sudden need, at 3am, to get into knitting. You won’t get those needles and yarn immediately, but you’d at least be able to rest easily knowing they’re on their way.

All that is to say: we’re a far cry from the days when you could count the number of legal shopping days on one hand (and an extra half-finger).

In fact, neither of my parents were even alive when six-day shopping was officially legalized in Burnaby.

A half-decade debate

On June 30, 1958, The Province reported that Burnaby stores could legally open six days a week, following about 15 years of five-and-a-half day shopping weeks.

In 1943, “as a wartime measure to conserve merchandise,” according to a 1985 Vancouver Sun article, stores were forced to close in Vancouver on Wednesdays for “11 controversy-ridden years.”

The bylaws in BC—by their very nature—were a patchwork of regulations, and different rules applied in different municipalities. While Vancouver shops were open Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, they were allowed to open full hours from Tuesday to Friday and for half days on Mondays—an extra half-day over the larger city.

Legalizing six-day shopping again was a nearly half-decade-long affair in Burnaby, and it didn’t come without hefty opposition.

Vancouver was the first city to do so—in June 1954, that city’s residents voted 54.1% in favour of the six-day shopping week, despite a “strong campaign against it” from the Save the Wednesday Association.

The Vancouver debate

And in Vancouver, the issue was hotly debated.

“Employees don’t feel sure of their day off,” H.E. Wood told the Vancouver Sun on June 19, 1954.

“People can do all the shopping they need to in five days,” added W.S. Brown.

In favour of the change, citing the “tourist interest,” hotel doorman P.A. Sanderson told the paper, “Every Wednesday, I have to send hundreds of American visitors over to West Vancouver to do their shopping.”

And W.W. Lockwood said the move would “build prosperity.”

On top of various trade associations, even the president of the Vancouver Policeman’s Union (now the Vancouver Police Union) waded in in an advertisement paid for by the 6-Day Shopping, 5-Day Work Week Committee in the June 14, 1954 edition of the Sun.

“I favour a six-day shopping week,” the ad quoted Fred Dougherty of the VPU as saying. “Six-day shopping would help ease traffic tie-ups. Thousands of dollars—including tourist dollars—are spent elsewhere when shops are closed on Wednesdays. No other city of Vancouver’s size enforces a mid-week shutdown.”

And the campaigns were, indeed, well-advertised—seemingly in particular from those in favour of the six-day shopping week.

“The six-day shopping week gives Vancouver merchants the full opportunity of servicing their customers who will not be compelled to go to West Vancouver or Burnaby to shop on Wednesday,” reads an ad in the June 22, 1954 Vancouver Sun, parroting a line that rang for months throughout the campaign.

Meanwhile, in Burnaby

Meanwhile, the conversation around a six-day shopping week hadn’t even begun here—and that conversation was quickly stamped out.

On Sept. 14, 1954, the Sun reported that the local Simpsons-Sears outlet—the now-defunct retail giant that later rebranded as Sears Canada—asked Burnaby municipal council to sponsor a Union of BC Municipalities referendum to allow six-day shopping weeks.

But by Sept. 28, that request was turned down as “the result of a deluge of protests against the proposal.”

“Fifty-nine protests were received to the department store[’s] suggestion that steps be taken to have the Municipal Act amended to allow for six-day shopping,” reads the Sept. 28, 1954 Province.

Those protests came from smaller businesses in the community that claimed they couldn’t keep up with the employment demands as the large retail outlet could. But the issue didn’t die there.

A call was once again made for Burnaby to move towards a six-day shopping week in 1957, this time from the Auto Court and Resorts Association (“auto court” being a now-archaic term for motels), according to the Sun on May 28 of that year.

But that wouldn’t come to pass for more than a year.

Pushback from store owners and labour

The Sun reported on June 17, 1958 that the municipal council had given first reading of a bylaw to allow shops to open the full day six days a week, from Monday to Saturday.

The “full day,” in this case, means stores could open until 6pm (an extra half-hour from the 5:30pm closing time prior to the new bylaw), except for Friday, when shops would be able to open until 9pm.

“The bylaw was introduced in the face of petitions from 44 South Burnaby and 52 North Burnaby merchants asking that present hours be continued,” reads the Sun article.

The bylaw exempted roadside and dockside stores selling marine and camping equipment, drug stores, and corner stores.

Just as they did four years prior, store owners were broadly opposed to the move, as noted above, and they showed up to council later that month to show it.

According to a June 24, 1958 Sun article, despite being able to open for half-days on Mondays, most stores didn’t open at all.

But the labour movement also backed the management at those stores.

Spokespeople for the Retail Food and Drug Clerks Union and the Vancouver and District Labour Council “claimed that the six-day week would be ‘a great setback’ in their efforts for satisfactory work hours in stores,” the Sun article noted.

The six-day shopping week is approved

While the stores’ 1954 campaign against a six-day week was successful, this one no longer was, and council gave final approval to the bylaw on June 30.

And the opponents weren’t happy, even going above the municipal council to ask the provincial government to review the matter.

Batten Bailey, the owner of a hardware store in North Burnaby, sent a letter of protest to both Burnaby’s reeve and BC’s premier.

“Only three stores wanted six-day shopping and 53 opposed it,” Bailey’s letter said.

“Action of the council in ignoring the wishes of the majority is a violation of a principle that could reduce us to a Soviet state if allowed to continue.”

The North Burnaby Retail Merchants Association similarly protested the move to the province and sought a legal opinion on the matter.

But the bylaw stuck—and numerous other municipalities soon followed suit.

The following year, North Vancouver and North Surrey began considering six-day shopping weeks. Richmond got its six-day shopping week in 1964, and the Sun reported on Aug. 28, 1968 that Port Coquitlam had begun talks on a six-day shopping week.

So what of the seven-day shopping week we all know and love?

That would come a few decades later.

In November 1985, The Province reported 45 BC municipalities had passed Sunday shopping referendums.

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