The different purchasing power of US$ and CAD$ killed the "everything in the store is a dollar" model in Canada at least a decade ago. But Dollarama, which is

The different purchasing power of US$ and CAD$ killed the "everything in the store is a dollar" model in Canada at least a decade ago. But Dollarama, which is so successful that it has pretty much squeezed out the other dollar store chains, has really just established themeselves as the "everything store" below the Walmart tier without any particular price - just low in general. Metal foil cookware, kids' party supplies and certain kinds of candy/sweets (I love their weird brand chocolate bars, particularly the "Island Bar" (Bounty clone) and Duoletta (Kinder Bueno clone). Also if you're out cycling they're a good place to buy things like Gatorade or chocolate bars for a reasonable price in quantity 1. And sometimes a totally ubiquitous store with a predicatable inventory of crappy-but-adequate stuff can be a real problem solver. For example, hit the road with the small children for the long drive to Grandma's, and half an hour out we find that we have the fruit, but not the knife to cut it with. No problem, next Dollarama is 25 minutes away, we'll just grab a knife there. $2! With sheath. Sure it doesn't stay sharp as long, but it totally did the job.