Retail workers pray for Boxing Day reprieve for one last year

“We would re-evaluate our Boxing Day hours of operation at that time,” DiCarlo wrote. “The Home Depot Canada is a proud member of the community and always strives to meet the needs of its customers."

“When it comes to local laws surrounding store hours, Future Shop respects and abides them in every market where we have stores,” wrote Elliott Chun, the company's communications manager.

Chun then went on to promote the company's shopping website. Calls and emails to Canadian Tire, Sears, Costco and Walmart weren't returned, but a manager with one of the big corporate stores in Sudbury says she and her staff are hoping council will give them one more year before allowing stores to open Dec. 26.

“We know this is inevitable now, but just for this year, we're hoping they won't rush it through,” the woman said, who asked not to be identified because she didn't have permission to speak with the media. “I've had so many people asking me for time off this year because they have plans already made, and it's so, so difficult to look at them and have to say, 'I don't know.' I mean, what can we do?”

She said many employees already made plans to spend the holidays with family, assuming they would have Boxing Day off, as they always have. For example, one longtime employee was planning to travel to Montreal to visit her son and new grandson.

“And I can't say yes to her,” she said. “I understand that things have to change in the new environment. But why do people think there has to be shopping all the time? I don't understand that.

“Scheduling is so, so difficult right now. I have another one asking because she wants to go home to Kirkland Lake and be with her family. And I can't say yes to her, either.”

She's hoping retail workers – and any sympathetic member of the public – will write letters to city council urging them to give retail workers a reprieve for one more Christmas season.

“We know it's going to happen – we have to be realistic – but could we have this year? It would be heavenly,” she said. “It would be such a weight off of a lot of people's shoulders.”

While falling just short of the 50-per-cent turnout required to make it binding, the vast majority of Sudburians voted in the October referendum in favour of repealing the three bylaws that restrict shopping hours.

Greater Sudbury is the only major city in Ontario that tightly regulates when stores can open.