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Eaton's of Canada Catalogue
Artifact #: 018999085
Donor: Sussex Farm Supplies
Shopping from the comfort of our homes is not a new idea. Amazon and Temu are some sources today but in years past, Eaton's and other companies mailed out catalogues. Canadians placed orders for everything from clothing and toys to furniture and appliances and even the plans and materials to build a house!
The Eaton's catalogue was one of the first to be distributed by a Canadian retail store. By 1896, Eaton's mail order department was sending out 135,000 parcels by post and almost 74,000 by express. The company was always looking for ways to expand its mailing list and even offered existing customers gifts in exchange for names and addresses of friends and neighbours!
Our catalogue is from the winter of 1963-1964. Eaton's published its last catalogue in the spring/summer of 1976.
The company and its catalogue are a part of Canadian culture and history. In The Hockey Sweater, Roch Carrier tells the real-life experience he had growing up in rural Quebec in 1946. He and his friends were Montreal Canadiens fans, and all wanted to be Maurice Richard. When his number 9 Habs sweater became too small, his mother ordered a new sweater from the Eaton's catalogue. He was sent ... a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater. Nothing could have been worse!
Watch the story here https://youtu.be/ZZyDsF-Gp3o?si=fzNRUAA3vNcxSHCb
Besides shopping, do you know other uses of the Eaton's catalogue?
Boys would strap a catalogue to each shin to make goalie pads when playing hockey.
Little girls searched the pages for figures to cut to make paper dolls. They then tried to find outfits that would fit the cut-out figures. Sometimes they made entire paper families to play with. Some even cut out pictures of furniture and used the cut-outs to furnish homemade doll houses.
Teachers in many one-room schoolhouses used the catalogues to teach children to read. Sometimes it was the only book they had to read. Catalogues were also cut up to create alphabet books using the illustrations.
Pages could be torn out, crumpled up and used as insulation to fill in drafty cracks in cabin walls.
And of course, there was the catalogue's final destination: the outhouse, where it was used to decorate the walls, for reading material and finally, as toilet paper.
Happy Shopping everyone!