RebelConcepts

Anyone shopping for a birthday present in Chilliwack who wants to skip the malls has fewer options than a city this size suggests, and there is no point pretending otherwise. The mall shops are national and therefore absent from this directory, which leaves a handful of independents: a traditional toy and game shop, hobby and model suppliers, a games and comics counter or two, mostly downtown and in Sardis. Those are the shops that survive on puzzles, craft kits, board games and models rather than on whatever is currently on television, and on knowing their regulars by name. A short list, then, but not a weak one.

That matters more in this category than in most. The difference between a shop for a seven-year-old's birthday and a shop for an adult building scale models is the entire difference between a useful trip and a wasted one, and nothing available here settles which of those applies. None of that is a criticism of the shop, only of what a listing can carry. Toy and hobby shops also tend to run narrow and deep, carrying one thing seriously rather than everything shallowly, so the sensible approach is to find out what the specialism is before deciding it is the right stop. The postal code will get a map to the right part of Sardis. Everything past that is a conversation with whoever is behind the counter, and in a shop of this kind that is usually the point anyway.