Talk:List of IKEA stores

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[edit] First IKEA in Canada

Way back when this list was part of the IKEA article, someone added the following to the "Notes" section of the Canadian entry of this list:

Previously IKEA's flagship store in Canada. It was open on Sundays, which was illegal at the time; the government forced it to close on Sundays beginning in 1988, and IKEA responded by closing the store altogether a few months later. It moved its operations to the Quebec City store. IKEA vowed it would never return to Nova Scotia.

This information is demonstrably false and led to a minor urban legend with people on blogs quoting Wikipedia and either lamenting the loss of the store or wishing for an IKEA store in Nova Scotia. As near as I can tell, the only truth to the link between IKEA and Burnside, Nova Scotia is that there is a furniture manufacturing plant in Burnside Park which was owned by IKEA and continues to manufacture furniture for the company. I've corrected the bogus information and substituted info from the IKEA Group's website. Sunray (talk) 20:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

REBUTAL

Trust me, this is not an Urban Legend. Yes IKEA did own a furniture making company (I think it was called Scanwood Canada Ltd before the province bought it). However IKEA did have a full size retail store complete with childrens playroom, show room, and a self serve warehouse were you picked up your furniture. When the store opened, the local papers (Chronicle Hearld, Mail Star) indicated that this was the first IKEA store in Canada.

On Sunday, a favorite pastime was heading over to IKEA to do furniture shopping, as other than drugstores, it was the only large store open in the area. Sunday was actually the busiest day of the week for sales for IKEA in the Dartmouth store.

For some reason, the Nova Scotia Government, did not pursue IKEA on the Sunday Closing Act. However in 1988, other large retail stores got on the band wagon as the Sunday Closing Act was stuct down. Unlike most other provinces, Nova Scotia kept creating Sunday closing laws, until it found one that would survive a court challenge (at least until a few years ago, when it was finally struct down, and the province gave up on preventing Sunday shopping).

When the Province was successful in 1988 with the Sunday Shopping Law, they pursued IKEA to close. In addtion, the new uniform retail closing act had heavier fines, unlike the old act. IKEA responded in the media, that they were closing, since they would not be profitable, if they could not open on Sunday, and they also indicated that they would never return to the Province, because of the way they been treated by the Goverment of Nova Scotia. This was also communicated as the reason to the staff upon layoff.

Being a long term resident of Dartmouth Nova Scotia, and knowing people that worked at IKEA at the time of closing, I can attest that this is not an Urban Legend.

The details of this event can also be found in the Archive of Chronical Hearld and Mail Star of Halifax Nova Scotia. (The archive is a paid service). I am also sure that residents of Dartmouth can also verify the details of this, as well as people that used to work at IKEA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.88.196 (talk) 23:55, 29 May 2008 (UTC)