Vancouver is a nice place I hear. I’ve never been, is what I’m inferring. Though I’ve lived in this country of Canada for 25 years now, I’ve never traveled west of Ontario. However, there is a connection Vancouver now has with the city I was born and raised in: Burlington, and it is for what the nostalgia in me is screaming, not a good thing. If you were around ‘the Couve’ way back in 1975, you would have noticed a bunch of convenience stores crop up with the name ‘Mac’s Milk’. Forty years later and anyone raised in a suburban or urban area in Canada knows about Mac’s Milk. They went big, to say the least. I lived down the street from one and along-side Tim Hortons it was a Canadian staple in my mind. Convenience you have a name! I never bought milk from them, but slushies you bet’cha.

My childhood passed into young adulthood and my time hanging out in plazas faded away… I went off to school, returned and began working steady. No more time for Mac’s except for the old drunken journeys to chips land. It became a thing of the past… Then the other day I drove to Timmy’s for a double double and their sign was gone! I think to myself this just can’t be. Is business not going well for them or something? I remembered back some years when one of their other locations in Burlington closed due to something of that like. So now what’s this? Circle K?! It reeks of corporation. It’s simple to remember and the sign is easy on the eyes. If I were a child or simple-minded I’d love it.

Another one popped up down the road. There! Another one! What the heck, it’s more than just Mac’s Milk. What’s going on here? So I look into it, and to my utter lack of surprise, business stuff happened. Completely legitimate business stuff. Back in 2015, Mac’s Milk was bought out by Circle K. Okay. Along with other companies. This American giant had the big bucks; good for it. THEN, making complete sense looking back from the future, Circle K decided to switch all the names over. And guess in what city they began this implementation? THAT IS RIGHT, right down the road from yours truly. Now it all adds up, eh? How Vancouver connects to Burlington. From the left side of the country Mac’s began, and to the middle-right it fizzled out of existence. Nostalgia what have you done to me?

In the end I don’t really care, it was only at first. It was only when I first found out did I feel the pain of losing something I thought would be around long after I passed to the other side. It’s like a dog experiencing the loss of its owner. It doesn’t really know to do with itself. You were bigger than me Mac’s, and now you have been dissolved, fare thee well.