by Benjamin Miller

According to CTV, earlier in May, East End Co-op Vancouver’s last food co-op closed its doors after 50 years. As Karma celebrates it’s 50th year, it’s worthwhile for all of us to pause and reflect on what caused them to close and what is going to keep us going.

The CTV article’s approach to this question is clever by starting with the founding of the co-op “The Commercial Drive staple launched in 1975, riding a wave of food co-op grocery stores aiming to disrupt the conventional grocery shopping experience…” A story very much like Karma’s.  

People organized to fulfill a collective need, purchasing natural, organic, ethical foods they couldn’t find elsewhere. The article ends by suggesting that it was the fulfillment of this need that led to its closing. “the co-op store appears to be a victim of its own success, helping bring organic, bulk and natural foods into the mainstream.” 

Certainly it’s true in Toronto that many (though certainly not all!) of the natural, organic, and ethical products at Karma can be found elsewhere. So what can you get at Karma that you can’t get elsewhere? So what can you get at Karma that you can’t get elsewhere? In my view, the answer is community.

What other grocery store has a newsletter where a stranger (for instance, me) can reach out to you and share their view about the future of food store you collectively own? Where else do the ethical standards of the products you purchase reflect your values because you had a hand (or at least had the opportunity) to democratically craft the policy it was purchased under? 

COVID-19 has been hard on community, particularly of the local kind, but if we’re being honest, the disappearance of local community and the rise of transactional and commodified relationships was already a pressing concern when Karma was founded and has only been intensified since the advent of the internet and the growing consolidation of multinational conglomerates. 

For my two cents, other places may be able to sell some of the products Karma sells, but you can’t sell community. 
I invite you to share your thoughts on the future of Karma in the pages of the Chronicle by emailing chronicleeditor@gmail.com or by posting to the Karma Facebook group.