Steveston General Store calls it a day in village after 35 years

Steveston merchant Chris Carr is closing her revered antique shop of 35 years and calling it a career.

What started as a consignment store with Carr’s mother June Lamond, Steveston General Store, on First Avenue, has fascinated even the most curious of minds, as Carr has spent countless hours buying and selling anything from furniture to all sorts of trinkets.

“Buying customers ended up being selling customers,” said Carr.

“It was nice for people to get a bit of money either downsizing or just changing décor,” she added.

Having accepted her last delivery of goods, a big sale will run from now until the end of September.

“It will be a time for me to thank the community for their support over these years,” said Carr.

The store became a mainstay for many regulars and survived the revolution of online buy and sell classifieds.

“A lot of people still like to come in and touch and feel an item. And because the stock changed all the time, especially for the customers who lived nearby …it was part of their daily walkabout,” said Carr.

Much of what drew people into the store, said Carr, was a sense of nostalgia.

“They’d see something that would remind them of their mother or grandmother or take them to another place. To me that mattered; that they enjoyed the store. It didn’t matter to me if they bought anything.”

Despite the pleasures of connecting people to memories (or vice versa when someone sold a treasured item), the store required yeoman’s work from Carr and her staff. Items purchased by Carr would typically need re-polishing or a quick hammer.

“A lot of stuff needs a coat or stain, a repair, bagging, packaging. The amount of work that happens in the backroom – not everything comes in and goes on the shelf as is. I was quite particular,” explained Carr.

But, “sometimes you put something on a counter and the girls don’t have time to put it away.”

One of her favourite memories was discovering, in 2015, an old suitcase belonging to her mom, who last remembered seeing it in New York in the 1940s.

Neither mother nor daughter could hypothesize as to where the piece of luggage — about 70x30x20 centimetres in dimension — had been all this time, and nor could the selling customer recall where it came from.

What was known is that the luggage carried Lamond’s articles to the now historic Taft Hotel building, just north of Times Square in Manhattan. And It still had the Taft Hotel decal plastered onto the top left corner, making identification easier for Lamond.

Carr said she will miss her customers and helping community-based charities, such as Pathways Clubhouse, a mental health advocacy organization, and Nova House for victims of domestic violence.

“I’m just going to enjoy the freedom. It’s been a wonderful run. It is the customers and the people who are the hardest thing to leave.”