Target

Friday January 16, 2015

Friday January 16, 2015Target closures leave big gap in local retail

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 16, 2015

Target’s decision to pull out of Canada will leave seven large spaces to fill in the local retail landscape and as many as 1,000 employees scrambling to find work.

Target has five stores in Hamilton and two in Burlington. The retailer wouldn’t say how many will lose their jobs between the seven locations but noted there are between 100 and 150 employees at each store.

Hamilton Target employee Madison Lip said news of the pending closure took her surprise Thursday morning.

“It was sad. I wasn’t expecting it,” said Lip, an 18-year-old cashier at the Upper James store.

Lip, a high school student, said she’s one of the lucky ones because she lives with her parents and has secured other part-time work.

But some of her colleagues have families to support, she said.

“They have bills to pay. They have kids.”

TrioVest Realty, which leases space to retailers at the Centre on Barton where Target has a 100,000 square-foot store, said finding another tenant won’t be easy.

“It’s going to be difficult. Finding a tenant for a large space like that is never easy, especially when you’ve already got the typical large users of space on site already,” said Tom Falls, senior vice-president of retail for TrioVest.

Falls said the good news is the east-Hamilton power centre still has plenty to offer consumers, including Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, Marshalls, Beer Store, LCBO, fashion retailers and banks.

“The consumer speaks with their wallet and I think the consumer spoke in Canada and unfortunately it wasn’t good news for Target,” he added. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Canada, economy, Target, labour, business, USA, commerce

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Wednesday, March 13, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The war of words between Mayor Rob Ford and the former mayoral candidate who accused him of groping her escalated on Sunday.

Ford said on his Sunday afternoon radio show that he questions whether Sarah Thomson is “playing with a full deck.” Thomson fired back later in the day with a statement that she wouldn’t be silenced. “Decades ago powerful men who sexually assaulted women would call them ‘hysterical,’ or ‘crazy’ to debase their credibility,” the statement read in part. “It pushed many assaulted women into silence . . . He will not push me into silence and I hope his accusations do not reignite the old fears that once silenced women.”

While Thomson has not yet gone to the police, she told the Star she would “wait and see” before making that decision.

Thomson, transit advocate and publisher of the Women’s Post, first posted on Facebook in the early hours of Friday morning that Ford “grabbed my ass” as they posed for a picture at a party held by a Jewish political group just hours before.

Thomson also said that Ford made a suggestive comment that she should have joined him on a recent trip to Florida because his wife was not there.

The post and accompanying picture, Ford with his eyes closed and a grin on Thomson’s face, ignited a firestorm of controversy. Ford immediately called the groping allegations “absolutely, completely false.” (Source: Metro News Toronto)

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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Thursday, January 24, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, January 24, 2013

Being drawn inexorably, inexplicably into Mali’s war

Slowly, inexorably, Canada and the world are being drawn into Mali.

The wise people say intervention is necessary. They say we must prevent the West African nation from becoming a springboard for terrorist attacks on Europe.

The wise people almost always say intervention is necessary. Fifty years ago, equally wise people urged intervention in Vietnam to prevent what was then called the “domino effect” — the fall of Southeast Asia to Communism.

We all know where that went.

Today, the dominoes of North Africa are said to be in danger from Islamic terrorists.

For practical politicians, all of this is a nightmare. After Iraq and Afghanistan, the American public is loath to involve itself in another war. As a result, Washington speaks softly and carefully.

Canadians, too, have been made weary by the Afghan experience. Prime Minister Stephen Harper knows that. That’s why his office has been so reluctant to admit that Canada’s very, very limited commitment to the war in Mali is gradually expanding.

Ottawa originally agreed to send one cargo plane for one week to help French troops in Mali. The French have now publicly asked for more. Mali’s ambassador to Canada says Harper agreed to expand its commitment. The prime minister almost certainly has. As the head of a government allied to France, he doesn’t have much choice. (Source: KW Record)