To call the closure of Streamer’s True Value Hardware regrettable would be an understatement.
For nearly 90 years, this northern icon has served Cranberry Portage and area with a personal touch that only a family-run business can offer.
“People from miles around come to visit and to purchase hardware from this truly remarkable family business,” then-Flin Flon MLA Gerard Jennissen observed in a 2008 member’s statement in the Manitoba legislature.
Since opening in May of 1928, Streamer’s has survived two devastating fires, cycles of boom and bust in Cranberry Portage, and fierce competition from the nation’s largest retailers in Flin Flon and The Pas.
But none of those challenges have put the bookend on the Streamer’s story. Instead, it’s the simple fact that the Streamer family wants to retire and there are no buyers willing or able to step in.
“There’s nothing wrong with the business. It’s just that we’re done,” Wayne Streamer, who owns the store along with brother Dale, told The Reminder.
Theirs is a familiar story playing itself out across Canada and beyond.
Business owners, who earn no pension, used to count on selling their business to fund their retirement.
But in today’s culture, the entrepreneurial spirit is not what it once was. Simply put, people are less willing to take chances.
A 2014 New Statesman article on Wall Street bankers touched on this phenomenon. Its title: “Far from the Wolf of Wall Street: How Did Young People Become So Risk Averse?”
Closer to home, other media outlets have reported on the decline of entrepreneurship and business start-ups in Canada.
“Are we witnessing the slow death of Canadian entrepreneurship?” asked an April article on Aspire Canada, a website for young professionals and entrepreneurs.
The closure of Streamer’s is not so much the death of the small-town general store as it is a sign that people would rather let someone else assume all of the hazards inherent in owning a business.
Governments at all levels should respond with a plan to encourage entrepreneurship and all of its job-creating, service-providing, quality-of-life-improving benefits.
There is money to be made in business in Cranberry Portage, and even more so in Flin Flon and area.
We just need the right incentives in place to ensure that when it comes time for a business to pass the torch, someone is waiting with an extended hand.
