4 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:
There's a rare snow and/or ice storm bearing down on us with record low temps forecast, and I was lucky to get any bread at all. There were long runs of empty shelves in the bread area, but there were a few more expensive brands left. I also had to get 1% milk because the 2% and whole were gone. Some stores sold out of these items altogether. There were films on the local news of feet upon feet of empty bread shelves and empty egg and milk coolers.
A few years ago, when my US-bred wife was alive, there was a major blizzard working its way towards us up the East Coast. My wife was tracking it through the various weather services, and after monitoring the storm's process she switched over to the news. She started with several US outlets, which showed endless lines of people cleaning the stores out of milk, bread, and bottled water. Then she turned to the local CBC website, which had a video of staff shaking their heads over a run on beer that had nearly cleaned out the liquor stores.
"That," she said, "Tells you everything you need to know about New Brunswickers."
ETA, for the benefit of American readers: New Brunswick, like most Canadian provinces, maintains a provincial monopoly on alcohol sales. You can only get beer at government-run liquor stores and their official agency outlets (in smaller towns that wouldn't support a full-scale liquor store).