Kaytlyn Bear handles customers at the Sandy Bay General Store. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski.
When Sandy Bay’s general store held its grand reopening at the end of October there was no debit machine in place and plenty of stock still waiting to come in, but the store handily attracted customers who had previously been driving hours to Creighton for groceries.
The store’s fridges, freezers, and shelves are stocked with groceries for the first time in many years after the band closed down the store many years ago due to what Sandy Bay mayor Paul Morin calls “limited financial resources,” although he knows little beyond that. Last year, Pelican Narrows, which is an hour-long drive, lost its Northern store to a fire and its old lot still sits empty, which forced people to drive much farther to stock up on groceries.
Morin says when he was elected, he had the idea to lease the Sandy Bay store from the band because he saw the need in his community. He says he had seen the negative impact that created “hungry children, people that were hungry because a lot of them were on social services,” and an increase in homelessness as families couldn’t afford to put up extended family members in their homes any longer.
“Because I have some educational business background, when I got into office apparently there was money set aside for an arena to be build. And I knew that would not happen overnight and we needed more than what was initially there. So my business thinking kicked in,” Morin says.
The village borrowed $100,000 from the arena fund for start-up costs in order to lease the store from the band and will lease it for three years.
“Because the need is in such great demand, we’re going to reimburse that $100,000 within six months in operation,” Morin predicted.
Sandy Bay General Store. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski.
He envisions a long-term setup where the community owns the store and operates it under a cooperative model, and possibly uses basement space for other economic opportunities, for example, a clothing store.
For now, the store is keeping pricing low: Morin says around 30 to 40 per cent added onto the direct price from the supplier. New suppliers are coming on board all the time, says the store’s manager.