The descendant of Armenian refugees, Gary had taken over his store from his father and it wasn’t a particularly good fit. In his soul, he was a patron of the arts and would lend money, give free groceries, and run long tabs for deserving (or not) poets, musicians, and painters. The New York Times would usually be spread across his counter, and he was more interested in reading it and discussing its contents than passing a broom, stocking shelves, or cleaning up the generalized chaos of his store. Health-code citations were frequent and undisputed, the fruit and vegetables usually withered and best avoided. But that was easy to overlook; Gary was such a good member of the community that friends reported running into him in smoky kitchens at 4 a.m. on the other end of a hash joint.

Harji was less, uh, bohemian, and his store somewhat more orderly and certainly more serene. cbc Radio 2 provided a soothing soundtrack, and talk of unpleasant subjects was rare. Customers were greeted with a double-barrelled blast of Happy Happy as soon as they entered: a huge, rosy-cheeked smile and a “Hi! Hi! Hi! How arrrrrre you” When asked the same question, Harji would reply “Good to extreeemely good” or “Could not be better” and the conversation would be off on its sunny way. Wilderness trips were a favourite subject. An Ismaili Muslim who had been chased out of East Africa along with so many others in the 1970s, Harji had become the most enthusiastic Canadian, right down to the canoeing and kayaking.

Relations between Harji and Gary couldn’t have been more civil. Mornings, they’d often confer on what constituted a fair price for asparagus or the Lobo apples that had just come in. Work done for the day, they’d sometimes have a coffee together. Come summer, they’d establish a schedule where they’d stay open on alternate Sundays. For a decade or so, it was Pleasantville, with pretty reasonable prices, even if the lettuce was limp and the mushrooms were going grey-brown.

When Gary died of cancer in the mid-1990s, his sister took over the store for a couple of years but she didn’t have it in her. For a while the store sat empty, not a rare sight in those days. Then, in time for the new millennium, Bob came along, bringing his own paradigm shift. He made his store bright, clean, and colourful. The produce was fresh and diverse. The packaged goods were exotic and, more often than not, delicious. Most radically, he colonized half of the wide sidewalk in front of his store, installing an expansive awning and display bins overflowing with mangoes, peppers, berries, clementines, and cucumbers. And the prices, always reasonable in the neighbourhood, became crazy cheap. Ninety-nine-cent pineapples, sixty-nine-cent lettuces, and three avocados for a dollar became regular fixtures on Parc Ave. We’d labour home under the weight of four bags of fruit and vegetables, all bought for less than $10.

Many of us were also burdened with guilt. We’d pledged to stand by Harji in the face of this overwhelming competition. But Bob’s proved too tempting and our loyalties were quickly compromised. More and more of our food dollars found their way into his till, and our visits to Harji’s”“often just to buy flax or sunflower seeds from his bulk bins or brinjal pickle and coriander chutney from his condiment racks”“grew less frequent.

Harji made an effort to keep up with Bob. He too appropriated some of the sidewalk for display bins. His produce improved. But it was a lost cause. Bob eventually had a fleet of male relatives “”brothers, sons, nephews”“all of whom seemed prepared to work eighty- or ninety-hour weeks. Harji just had himself, his wife, and maybe an occasional shelf-stocker. And he had a life to lead outside his store.


n the surface, relations between Harji and Bob seemed perfectly civil. Shortly after setting up shop, Bob had told people he wasn’t interested in running Harji out of business or off the block; there was room for everyone. “We’re both Pakistanis”“why would I want to hurt him” Bob said. But things weren’t anywhere near as smooth as they had been in the old days. Early on, Harji had approached Bob to inquire whether he might be interested in the kind of gentlemanly arrangement he’d had with Gary Nazar. Or to, at least, establish an agreement to keep the competition from becoming cutthroat and relentless. Bob blew him off.

And prospered. Within four years, Bob had taken out a lease on an empty storefront on the other side of the mega-drugstore immediately to his north. There, he set up his brother with a store specializing in organic produce and health foods, competing with the granola side of Harji’s business. Still, between the bourgeois branchés of Outremont on the west side of Parc Ave. and the neo-hippies of Mile End to the east, the organic thing seemed a good call. Then, in early 2005, Bob rented a shop directly across the street and opened a charcuterie full of olives, fresh pasta, fancy crackers and spreads, and meats and cheeses.

All the while, he worked mind-bogglingly hard”“seventeen hours a day, seven days a week”“and enthused about the neighbourhood. “People here, they’ll try something new. I bring in something they’ve never seen before and it goes off the shelf like that,” he’d say, making a sweeping gesture. It wasn’t like stuffy old Westmount, where he’d previously had a store, Bob would add, frowning and shaking his head at the memory.