John Thomson's I Didn't Know That!

It was quite a weekend in the news across Canada as there were two more incidents of pythons being found.  In one case, 48 pythons were in one house although other reports stated 60 snakes.  This was two blocks from a school.

Down east in a motel room 40 more were found.  This was a unit being rented by a family that just lost their home. They had two children.

What is going on? These snakes came across the border and I don’t blame the Customs people because for some reason I guess there are no rules for this although provincial legislation calls for no sale of these snakes.

Conservation officers also told CBC News on the weekend they had nowhere to house the snakes.

"We don't have the capacity to store 46 controlled alien species snakes, so we can't take any sort of risk, we had to have those animals put down," said conservation officer Dave Cox.

We actually have people raising snakes of this caliber on snake farms in Canada. I don’t get it.

But don’t worry, Ottawa officials are looking into the situation and you know how long that takes and they won’t be finished with the Pamela audit for eighteen more months.

I just hope no more Canadians are killed because we need a new law on the books.

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We are still talking about new U.S. retailers coming into the market place across Canada in 2014. We already know that Seattle’s Nordstrom’s will be the first with a downtown store in Vancouver in the location Sears gave up. The Nordstrom family who still control the chain have already said there will be stores in Calgary, Ottawa and Toronto.

Across the street and down the block, Hudson Bay are indicating that their first Saks store in Canada will be in the building that is currently The Bay. There will of course be more outlets in their plans.

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Glen Campbell has Alzheimers and it has slowed him down from his national “last tour” to say goodbye to his fans. He was trying and his children were backing him in the shows. But it became just too difficult to continue on because he has so many hits to sing for the fans. So they took the show off the road. But he has gone into the studio to record one last album.

This man had an amazing career and along with that an amazing life. His solo career piled up twenty-one top 40 albums charting nine No. 1 country albums. Campbell has 81 charted albums over his career.

We saw him twice for sure and I liked him very much.  He put on a good show and could really play a mean guitar.

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I read this the other day and I just have to tell you about this progress in the grocery industry. Many of the big players over the years have invested millions of dollars trying to figure out the linguistics of warehousing and shipping to their stores across the country.

It has cost Loblaws for their stores, including Superstore and Extra Foods, millions of dollars to get that jar of pickles to your shelf for you to purchase. My daughter in Calgary has long complained that from one week to next you never know but she has said it is getting better.

Sobeys just invested $6 Billion to purchase out the Safeway chain in Canada. The Nova Scotia merchant that owns Sobeys have just completed a new warehouse shipping centre and this is special. The company receives an email order from one of the 1200 and some stores although there will be more and their warehouse in turn packs the order one aisle at a time. So when the order is delivered to every store it can be set in the right aisle for shelving.

I don’t know whether other distributors can do that or not. I thought it was pretty neat because I have been writing about this snafu for years with complaints from my readers about the badly stocked shelves in some of these stores.

In general, grocery distribution efficiency increases as volume increases as long as the capacity of a building is not exceeded. When throughput and/or storage capacity is exceeded, then there can be a sharp decline in warehouse productivity which ends up yielding a higher cost per case for distribution services due to additional overtime and manpower requirements.

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The Laird of Fintry has been crafted from 100% B.C malted barley, fermented and double-distilled in a copper-pot still. After six years of barrel aging in French and American Oak, this Single Malt is smooth, non-peated and combines solid forest notes of toasted oak with more delicate tones of vanilla, plum, raisins, caramel and spice.

With only 210 bottles in this batch, Okanagan Spirits is holding a lottery in the first week of October to allocate the whisky.

Okanagan Spirits is an internationally acclaimed craft Distillery featuring a unique selection of specialty spirits. Made from 100% BC fruit, and without additives, chemicals or artificial flavours, these fine spirits have won numerous awards domestically and internationally.

Okanagan Spirits is recognized as a World Class distillery, and one of the top craft Distilleries in the world. This is a testament to the quality of fruit and skilled expertise that goes into producing each bottle of spirits.  One of their classic stores is on Bernard in Kelowna.

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Another story that has been making the rounds for a couple of years is the changing of the Canadian chain Rona.  It was about 16 months ago that I had written about Lowes coming to the Kelowna. Lowes is the second largest home renovation stores in the U.S. It was a plan and the developer was working on it but all of a sudden Lowes placed a buyout deal on the Rona president’s desk that the company would like to buy out the Roma chains big box stores for just under $2 Billion. That would put Lowes in the swing of things and double their store count in Canada. They have 35 stores now.

Home Depot has 180 big box stores now and seems to be satisfied that the stores are doing alright.

I don’t know officially at the moment if Lowes has any future interest in Kelowna at the present time. The deal they were working on  for Kelowna was a sweet one.

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The Naramata Bench Wineries Association TAILGATE PARTY on September 7th is SOLD OUT.

Spokesperson Tina Baird comments, "We are very pleased that so many people want to join us for our party of the year. We look forward to sharing the wines, food and beauty of the Naramata Bench with wine and food enthusiasts."

The Tailgate Party:  24 member wineries of the Naramata Bench Wineries Association are circling their trucks and dropping their tailgates on September 7 for their  wine party of the season.  The event will take place in the heart of Naramata Village at Manitou Beach and Park from 6:30 to 9:00 PM.

This was a good idea and it sure worked.  We’ll have to see how it does.

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Canadian Tire is discussing smaller stores for the urban market. With more and more people wanting to live in the city core it is time to think smaller. We had a smaller Canadian Tire close to our neighbourhood in Toronto. This was a fun place to shop and get to know the staff. Wal-Mart is also taking a look at a smaller store. They have been testing a Neighbourhood Market idea with about 45,000 sq ft. Meanwhile overseas, the giant international retailer IKEA have the same idea.