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Our traditional main streets still have lots of stores, squeezed in between all that coffee.

But there are some things harder and harder to find on Ottawa’s urban mains: bookstores, music shops, hardwares, department stores of any size, big grocery outlets, newsstands, movie theatres, shoe stores, old-style “corner” stores, and now toy stores.

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The demise of Mrs. Tiggy Winkle’s is a blow to the entire city and a reminder that the main street of your youth is gone, never to come back. But cheer up, here’s a $2 doughnut.

A fitness centre beside a yoga studio, next to a chiropractor, adjacent to a Bridgehead, beside a bank below a condo, alongside a trendy restaurant that will die in two years, is not a far-off description of what you see along stretches of Wellington, Bank, Rideau or Elgin.

Sure, Tiggy Winkle’s was just an independent toy store — six outlets at its peak. But is its demise telling us something important about the neighbourhoods we’re building and the perilous future of the family-owned independent, yet another canary in retail’s coal mine?