One of the Capital region’s longest-running retail institutions has finally opened the doors to a St. Albert location.
McBain Camera opened in St. Albert Centre last week and manager Rene Rodrigue said the response has been great so far.
“I’m really happy to be here,” he said. “It’s a good community, very friendly. We’ve been overwhelmed with the number of friendly people coming through the doors already, and we’ve only been open a week.”
McBain packed up their Kingsway Garden Mall location to move to St. Albert.
“We decided that Kingsway wasn’t far enough north, so we might as well go really far north,” Rodrigue said with a laugh.
Rodrigue added the specialty camera market was certainly a niche that wasn’t being addressed in St. Albert.
“There are some people who sell cameras in St. Albert, but we’re unique in that we only sell photo equipment, and we’re certainly experts at it, too,” he said. “There are a lot of photographers in St. Albert.”
And McBain’s reputation is particularly strong, not only in the Capital region, but also in markets like Red Deer and Lethbridge.
“We’ve been Edmonton’s biggest camera supplier for 62 years now, since 1949,” he said. “It’s still a family-owned company and a good reputation. We still have people who come in that bought their cameras from us in the ’60s.”
McBain Camera is located in the old Game City store in St. Albert Centre, just down the hall from Entrance 1 between Sport Chek and The Bay.
The Enjoy Centre is slowly but surely coming together, with two more stores in the complex opening their doors this week.
Amaranth Whole Foods Market was first founded in 1994 and St. Albert is their first location outside of Calgary. According to their website, they are “dedicated to promoting healthy foods, nutritional awareness, and environmental responsibility through the products sold and services provided.”
Some products offered include organic produce, supplements, body care products, natural cleaning products, books, gifts and greeting cards.
This is Amaranth’s third location. For more information, check out www.amaranthfoods.ca.
Meanwhile, the Prairie Baker also opened up this week, a European-style bakery that features artisan breads, cakes and tarts. Master baker Gabor Dobos uses locally sourced ingredients, and does his best to produce gluten-free options whenever possible.
The bakery will not only make products to sell itself on the complex’s ground floor, but also for use in the Prairie Bistro restaurant, which opened a few months ago.
For more information, check out www.prairiebistro.ca and click on “Prairie Baker.”
The Canadian dollar continued its upward climb this week, hitting its highest level since the recent recession when it closed the trading day at $1.0613 USD Wednesday, its highest point in three and a half years.
The previous peak was in April when the loonie was trading at $1.0581. It had not reached such heights since October 2007.
However, the soaring currency likely won’t bring any relief for Canadians at the grocery store cash register.
Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney said this week that agricultural prices are up 40 per cent year-over-year and likely won’t be coming down anytime soon.
“Food, unfortunately, is going to remain relatively expensive and get a little more expensive in the coming months,” he told a press conference in Ottawa Wednesday.
Rising food and energy prices have pushed inflation rates higher than Bank of Canada projections, and they are expected to remain above three per cent for several months to come. The central bank has targeted two per cent, but that goal likely won’t be met until the middle of 2012.
For now, the Bank of Canada’s interest rate remains unchanged at one per cent, mainly due to uncertainty over economies in the United States and Europe, but Carney indicated Tuesday that may go up in the very near future to help deal with inflation.
