Perhaps what many of the 70 Dominion store employees in Marystown dreaded most of all happened Thursday. They were notified they would receive written notices of termination of employment with the company, effective Jan. 31, 2010.
For many of the employees it is a shock, which they weren't prepared to face, even though the original closure announcement came in June. It likely seemed surreal.
Dominion - a store which had served Marystown for 30 years - would actually close.
For others, perhaps a severance package after 25-30 years with the company is something some have gradually been contemplating over the last few years. It could be these individuals want this avenue to carry on with their lives or start afresh at something else.
Whatever the reaction of workers, the community's reaction in the new year will be a fear of higher grocery prices. Everyone has to eat and with limited shopping options the fear is prices will climb with certain stores holding a monopoly.
The fact is Dominion, like its main competitor Sobeys, have become almost icons on the Burin Peninsula with Dominion here for three decades and Sobeys for over 40 years.
But then this is the way of commerce in our new world.
Remember the old businesses, which sold groceries and other wares in the community - the Murleys, Reddys, Holletts and Wiscombes in Marystown, Applebys in Burin; Buffetts, Nurses, Grandys in Grand Bank; two Lake families in Fortune along with others in peninsula towns have for the most part floundered.
They had all grown up around the fishing industry, many supplying the draggers that left for sea from their communities on a weekly basis.
It was Dominion and Sobeys, in Marystown and Grand Bank, and the several re-incarnations of Price Chopper in Burin that eventually replaced these family businesses.
Residents were displeased, if not more alarmed, at the closure of the smaller stores, which were just not able to compete with the larger chains.
It is disappointing, and upsetting, to see a business disappear from the community scene. Its benefits for the community are not really missed until that store is gone.
But then there are the Wal-Marts of this world that arrive and set about doing business to fill the gaps left by departing services.
Unfortunately, it's the way of this new commerce world that means global competition. If you don't compete in the main population areas, then for a business to survive and meet the extraordinary expectations of investors it's the outreach stores in rural areas that end up of paying the piper.
