So as I mentioned in my last post, three confederates and I travelled from the Southern reaches of this province to the lands Northeast of its capital between Christmas and New Years day.

Chatham was our first true stop on the journey, and its downtown mall was very much what I expected. Downtown Chatham Centre shares many traits with the original Market Square building in Kitchener before its major renovation in the mid-80s. The Chatham mall is a boxy, red brick affair with few windows. Inside there were wires hung between stores like the makeshift power lines of a slum city one might see in other parts of the world. The shops all seemed to be struggling, though many had already turned tumbleweed.

One of the more notable tenants is the Chatham Model Railroad Club, who have made good use of a closed shop there. This was the first hint of a trend I began to notice in these malls as the trip progressed. Almost all of them have become hubs (to varying degrees) of community activity. Many of them house interest groups, libraries, colleges, municipal offices and things of that sort. When you really think about it, it makes plenty of sense that this would be the case. These malls were built to be exactly that – hubs of community activity, granted with a focus on retail. But with the retail dying out, why shouldn’t the community activity take over?