CanadianTire is notorious for bad automotive services. Many people even refuse to buy the products they carry because of bad experiences in the past with their staff or memories from other store’s sales reps. I share the same experiences with many people in this boat too. However there is one CanadianTire I still visit for some of my automotive needs, it is because the former store manager made a very strange move when he took over the store. He replaced the entire automotive department with a group of amazing service managers and of the team he hired,one of them is a guy I knew when I was in elementary school while he was working at Woolco’s automotive services! This guy have yet lied to me and I have been following him to different stores as he jump. This team was strange because at times, they would tell me to take the car somewhere else to obtain cheaper services or how something’s are minor things which can be done by me. However, this is not the reason on why I decided to write a post on this. It is actually the design of the store itself.

  
With the modernization CanadianTire Corporate seems to have been forcing on its chain, many older CanadianTire stores no longer looked like the CanadianTire stores I grew up with. It is very rare to see a store which still carries the old look and feel from the 90s era CanadianTire.

    
Of course the colour is a not the same as it was since it matches the modern era colour scheme and the logo is the new and modernized one too, I believe these changes are mandated by the CanadianTire corporate head office, but the building underneath still contained the red bricks that I remember growing up with. I recall many CanadianTire stores looked alike back in the 90s, with the red bricks exterior and a classic CanadianTire entrance design that can only be rivalled by McDonald’s arch entrances and Kentucky Fried Chicken’s massive spinning bucket of chicken sign. However, as a newer design came in, I personally prefer the non-uniformality that could have been introduced. Instead stores that can avoid being revamped seems to have added a layer of paint which gives off a sense that it doesn’t belong. When I saw this, it just reminds me of a scene from a novel I read sometime ago,  I believe it is custom of the country by Edith Wharton. The scene had our protagonists walking into an upperclass party with her young and natural beauty while the older ladies at the same party have layers of makeup on to hide the damages time had done to them. Just like how those aging woman applied make up to their faces, a layer of ‘make up’ was padded onto the bricks covering its worn but originally glorious building design. Why can’t we just have the older store design stay as is?

Side note, I think this is also what shaped my distaste for over applied makeup in women.