Sears’s passing also brings with it an end to department store catalog shopping in Canada, once an integral part of many people’s lives. Some of you graciously responded to my recent request for your memories of catalog shopping.

Here are some highlights:

Danielle LaPorte said that when the Christmas edition arrived at her family’s home in Callander, Ontario, “my friend Judy would come over and we’d spend hours sitting on the sofa initialing every single item we were interested in, taking turns back and forth on each page.” Often, Mr. LaPorte said, her parents took the hint and one or two of the items would appear as gifts.

“My mother later told me that she used to go through the catalog herself and fill out the order form with every single thing each of her seven children, husband and she needed, as well as a few things for the house,” Ms. LaPorte added. Financial reality then set in. “She’d throw the order form in the garbage but somehow feel better. I guess she liked to dream, too.”

Leann McAndie also engaged in enthusiastic study of the Christmas catalogs with her sisters on a farm in southern Saskatchewan during the late 1960s. But for her, the memory had a dark side.

Ms. McAndie said that her older sisters once told her that their mother, who was away from home, was never returning and that she had to pick out a replacement from the models in the catalog. “I remember, like it was yesterday, sitting in our farmhouse living room with tears streaming down my face at the thought of never seeing my mother again yet dutifully turning the pages of the catalog and trying to decide between the new moms on offer.”

For Heather McLaren, who now lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, catalogs were a way to earn, as well as spend, money.