It used to be heavily regulated in Canada (or at least Manitoba) until very recently as well, like some time in the last 20 years or so. I remember when Wal-Mart first entered Canada, they had a really hard time in some places because labor laws and blue laws prevented them from being open 24/7.
Used to? Hell, in Texas, you cannot buy alcohol until after noon on Sundays. Still. Today, er, yesterday, but you get the point.
Liquor stores (which also sell beer/wine) are not allowed to be open on Sunday, period.
Note this pertains to off-premise (i.e., stores, not bars) only. Bars, you're free to get sloshed to your hearts desire on any type of alcohol and as early as 10AM on Sundays.
During certain hours (such as, past 8PM on weekends), groceries are only allowed 4 employees. Which is almost impossible in those very large groceries. For many groceries, they just assume this is part of doing business, they would rather pay the fine than angering customers with long lines.
https://www.economie.gouv.qc.ca/bibliotheques/conformite/ouv...
Blue laws around vices (specifically around the sale of alcohol) are still commonplace in the US.
However, Bergen County, NJ, still has the rare Sunday blue law that applies to everyday consumer goods -- you can purchase food and medicine on Sunday (and even alcohol after noon, per a state-wide vice blue law), but everything else is prohibited. If you visit a big-box store like a Costco or Walmart that sells both food and goods, large swaths of the store will be closed down on Sunday.
https://www.wnyc.org/story/assessing-bergen-countys-blue-law...
This is arguably a big factor for both Chick-fil-a and liquor stores that are prevented state-wide from opening on Sundays (in the US)
But for others, definitely that's the case. And it's been this way for so long I'm sure it's just a known and we're essentially tethered to Hamilton via transit and highways so there are a ton of options just a few minutes further down the road.
This scheme was common up till the mid nineties. Since then it has been relaxed, but it is still regulated.
One of the reasons listed for the regulation is the protection of 'Mom & Pop' stores.
I'm generally a fan of longer opening times, but having a day where everyone but entertainment and hospitality has free time simultaneously seems very healthy for both families and society at large.
Unless, of course, they are in a train station. This loophole seems to be _heavily_ exploited.
A silly motivation. Smaller-scale businesses on the "convenience store" model are more likely to provide extended opening hours than any large store operation. That's as close to "Mom & Pop" as it gets.
I talked about the 80s and 90s and a healthy work/life balance was still a political talking point at the time.
(To be clear, I'm not saying everything was great in the days of "all women are house wives" but it would have been nice if the stigma of a house husband went away instead, rather than the actual turn out of "both adults must work").
It was almost an inevitably. Especially for the middle class, I would imagine that both sides of the couple working provided a substantial boost in economic mobility. Or at least a perceived one. At that point its just keeping up with the joneses.
That is a lot of left radicals and only 1 religious party.
And many others besides.
Really, why would you even try to argue something that is pretty much settled history at this point in time? The Netherlands historically had a very strong religious streak running through it and one of the last vestiges of their direct influence on Dutch society is the 'Winkelsluitingstijden' law.
NL is percentage wise (or rather, was) one of the countries were religion was 'on the way out', unfortunately that trend seems to have first stabilized and is now reversing. It's a pity because personally I think religion should have absolutely no place in politics or organized society, though I do believe that people should be free to practice whatever religion they want as long as it does not negatively affect others.
As you mention, it's the religious intolerance that one finds disturbing, not religion (of any kind) itself. It is fairly rare to have one without the other these days, it would seem. The phenomenon is not limited to NL alone, I think.
Gelderland (where my family is from) is definitely more religious than say Amsterdam, but far less than the South of Limburg or the 'Bible Belt'. At the same time, those are all various offshoots of Christianity, whereas if you were to look at Islam you will find the opposite, it is strongly represented in the big cities, where there is hardly any Christian offshoots left (and if they are they are dying).
Churches are disappearing, Mosques are rising up everywhere, and I'm not sure if the longer term will find NL with a more tolerant version of itself or if it will regress at some point.
When stores first started opening on Sundays it was usually for only limited hours. I remember everything shutting down around 4-5pm on Sundays when I was a kid. That's not really the case anymore. When I was a teenager in the late 90s I was paid $1 more an hour on Sundays.
This was published in the NY Times in 1986
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/19/nyregion/sunday-shopping-...
>Similar changes are being felt throughout the region and indeed in most parts of the nation. Like New York, many other states in recent years have struck down legal restrictions that prohibited the sale of most goods on Sundays. The curbs, called blue laws, date from colonial New England, with the observance of the Sabbath being their main purpose.
It stood out to me because in California most everything was open on Sundays. So it seemed to be more of an East Coast thing.
A state I lived in as a child allowed grocery stores, restaurants, and pharmacies to be open on Sunday, but not much else. Restaurants were also allowed to sell alcohol on Sunday, while liquor stores weren't. A local restaurant took advantage of this double loophole and put in a drive-through booze window that they only opened on Sunday.
there are some exemptions such as airport shops, petrol or motorway service stations, etc.
the main reason there are still legal restrictions on sunday trading are advocacy groups such as "Lord's Day Observance Society" and the "Keep Sunday Special" campaign.
Wait. Retailers weren’t always open on Sunday?