-Boxing Day 2000

FTLComm - Winnipeg - December 26, 2000

You will notice that in the past two years Ensign has not published on Boxing day as it was a day to sit back and enjoy the season, family and sort out one's thoughts. Well today we break that tradition because in this Winnipeg household people were up in the middle of the night getting ready for work. Two folks had to be at work at 6:00 AM for the big boxing day sale and because they knew what it would be like they were on the job at 5:30. Winnipeg and many Eastern Canadian cities really take Boxing day seriously whereas in Saskatchewan most communities have all their businesses closed as, like Ensign, they take the day off. But the Winnipeg concept is to go for it and merchants actually bring in special stock for the sales binge that took place this morning. This story is being written at 10:30 and by now most of the shopping has already been done. Electronics, high end stores are crowded and competitive and by eleven their customers begin to thin out and the big sell off the year is pretty much over by noon as the bargains have been snapped up by the early customers and the guys who went to work at five this morning will be finished work at four. One would expect merchants to be selling off the unsold Christmas goods on boxing day but most of them had planned in advance what they would be offering as this one day shopping special. The high end electronics firm we mentioned earlier actually sells off its demo equipment and display stuff this Friday in its annual "garage sale" when the real bargains actually can be had. With -29 C temperatures out there this morning it probably is a good idea just to sit back and browse the web as you are doing rather then tangle with the traffic and trauma of power shopping.