Video stores are becoming fewer and fewer in the City of Calgary, especially with the prevalence of Netflix and other online services for movies, but one store isn’t going out without a fight.
Casablanca Video, located at 9136 Macleod Trail S.E., moved to its current location from Marda Loop earlier this year.
The company first opened 33 years ago, founded by Jon Lord, a former Calgary councillor and Alberta MLA. It has been serving tens of thousands of customers, helping them to find the hard-to-find classics and documentaries.
Sheryl Guillame, Lord's partner, now manages the store following his death earlier this year.
She hopes to stay open for another 33 years. “It would be sad to see this go. Many throughout Canada have just folded – they were close to being as large as us.”
She says that there is still a great need for video stores like hers no matter how technology changes.
"When people say everything's digital, everything's on the Internet, they obviously haven't come in here."
It's the movie lovers that really help keep the store open too. "Anybody can get new releases anywhere and it's nice to have those, but it's the catalogue, those movies that you remember as a kid and you want to share them with your kids."
She adds that instead of being competition, Netflix actually helps them out. "You can burn through Netflix in six months. I've been here ten years and there's no way I've even touched half of what's here."
Guillame says she hopes that more people start coming in to use the store and see all that it has to offer, from the silent films of the early 1900s to modern day.
