Lindsay, Ontario chain grocery/supermarket locations, 1925-2018.
So...what is Lindsay? It's a small community of 20,000, an hour north of Oshawa. It no longer exists as a distinct political entity: Its town government was merged with that of the surrounding county in 2001, in the same wave of forced consolidation under the Harris government that led to the Toronto "megacity" and Rob Ford. But I digress...
Lindsay's entire downtown area consists of a strip six blocks long. Nevertheless, I ran into a surprising amount of trouble while tracking down locations on foot due to the town's idiosyncrasies:
- A large proportion of downtown buildings have unposted address numbers. (I suppose locals don't need them, because locals already know where everything is.)
- The address numbers on the two sides of Kent Street are not in sync with each other! 132 is directly across the street from 157, and a block removed from 131.
- Address ranges advance whenever they feel like it, and not necessarily where streets cross.
- Address numbers are on an inconsistent scale. 200 Kent Street West is a lot closer to 100 than it is to 300.