By Michael Elioff
Photo via Bru-n0 on Pixabay
Local record store Grooves Records has opened an online store. You might expect the addition of an online store to be a result of the pandemic. However the stores owner Troy Hutchison says that isn’t the case.
“It’s something we’d always wanted to do, but it takes a lot of work and expense. The pandemic really put our feet to the fire. And we’ve been working away on it since the summer pretty much since we got back to work after the first lockdown.”
According to Hutchison setting up an online store wasnt without it’s challenges.
By Victoria Newman
Feb 7, 2021 8:10 PM
This is a picture of the Tourism London building on Wellington Rd. Photo taken by Victoria Newman/ XFM News.
The COVID pandemic has had devastating effects on the travel and tourism industry.
In London, before COVID, the tourism industry brought in quite a lot of money.
“Tourism has been recognized as a major economic driver for the city… Last year according to our statistics, we are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact. That is a total of overnight stays, of purchases through accommodations, and restaurants, and food services but also things like gas purchases, things like retail, shopping, we’re very well known for that. So yes, we as London, although we don’t have a Niagara Falls or a CN Tower, we do heavily rely on tourism,” said Cheryl Finn, general manager at Tourism London.
By Victoria Newman
With the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses had to shift to the online market.
Darren Chapman is an economics professor at Fanshawe College, and this is what he had to say about companies having to shift online. “Their availability to the customer has been severely limited through shutdowns and provincial orders and federal orders. And so, the only way that they can keep their revenue going is to continue to sell. And it appears that the only market that is available to them now is through the virtual markets rather than on bricks and mortar. So, clearly those companies in order to stay viable have to change their way of doing business.”
Smoking is one of the biggest causes of preventable death every year. According to the World Health Organization, tobacco use kills more than 8 million people worldwide each year. In recent years, some people have been using e-cigarettes as a way to quit smoking. However, the effectiveness of this strategy is still up for debate. Haleigh Passarella is a woman who says that her having a vape actually led to her using cigarettes more often.
“Honestly, if I didn’t have the vape, I probably wouldn’t even have smoked cigarettes, because like, I feel like the vape was kind of my gateway to that. So yeah, I definitely do not think that I would smoke cigarettes as frequently if I had didn’t have the vape.”