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Growing up in northeast B.C., there were a few indicators each year that winter was approaching.

The leaves changed colour and fell from the trees. The days were shorter. The temperatures were colder.

It was common to see snow on the ground before Halloween.

And the Sears Christmas catalogue came out.

By that point in my life, I was discovering a passion for the printed word. We had the Alaska Highway Daily News. We had the daily papers from Vancouver and Edmonton.

But outside of the papers, the Sears Christmas catalogue was the publication I looked forward to the most.

Since I was seven or eight years old at that time, I would tear through the catalogue until I found what I was looking for: the new Transformer toys that were available that winter.

There were all the cool toys that were introduced after the animated movie in 1986. And Christmas was coming. I was going to get four or five new toys that year. The Sears catalogue was my scouting report for what would be available.

Of course, the catalogue contained much more than just a hot toy line from Hasbro. There were other toys in there too. My sister would look through her options.

Sporting goods, electronics, furniture, tools, clothes – the catalogue had it all.

I know I’m not the only one in my generation who fondly remembers looking through the catalogue. And younger people and older people fondly remember that catalogue, too.

So you could understand why I was a little nostalgic last week when I found out that Sears Canada would be closing. I reflected on how much I looked forward to seeing that catalogue every year. I reflected on the time spent in Sears stores as I became older, when I realized that Sears was much more than just toys.

Of course, my sense of loss is nothing compared to what other people are feeling. These are people who are losing their jobs. About 12,000 people will be out of work when Sears closes.

In the case of the Sears Hometown stores, like the one in Estevan that played an important role in the local retail scene, it was locally owned and operated by a franchisee who took a chance and decided to live out the dream of owning his own business.

Regardless of how well the local store was doing, this store is going to have to close. And that’s a sad part of this narrative; this store will have to close because of Sears failings in other parts of the country.

Hopefully a new company can step in and fill a gap in our retail sector.

Incidentally, if you go into a Sears store and find the deals or the selection in the liquidation sales aren’t to your liking, please do everyone a favour, and shut up and leave. If you complain to someone about to lose their job or their business about the price of a mattress, then you are a loser.

People have been predicting Sears Canada’s demise for years. It was, at one time, a powerful retailer in the country. Now it’s joined Zellers, Woolco, Woolworth, Eaton’s and other department stores on the list of Canadian retailers to meet their demise.

And yet the loss of Sears is different. Thanks to the catalogue, and the vast network of Sears delivery sites, you could argue that Sears was arguably the company best-positioned to handle the onset of online shopping.

After all, Sears had the presence in small communities that others didn’t have. You didn’t have to live in a community with a Sears department store or Hometown store to shop at Sears. You needed a catalogue and the pickup site. If you didn’t have a pickup site in your town, odds are there was one in a community nearby.

But Sears wasn’t able to make that transition that should have been more natural for them.

I hadn’t seen a Sears catalogue in years. I don’t have the time to look through catalogues any longer when doing my shopping. Just newspaper ads and flyers.

But as I think of the end of Sears in Canada, I think about the catalogue. And it’s just one of the reasons I’m sad to see Sears go.