Convenience Stores
Former Bankhead Store
About Former Bankhead Store
Every older Canadian city keeps a few buildings whose names outlast their trade, and 1396 Bernard Avenue carries one of them. The Former Bankhead Store stands well east of the restaurant blocks and the waterfront, up where Kelowna's main street runs through a residential grid of houses, churches and small offices before it reaches the highway.
The small neighbourhood shop is a building type that shaped how these streets were laid out. Before every household had a car, and before the arterials filled with supermarkets, a store on a corner served the few blocks around it, and the footprint tended to be distinctive: display windows right at the sidewalk, a squared front, living quarters above or behind. Kelowna has lost most of them to redevelopment and kept a handful. Some have been restored as offices or homes, some carry on in an entirely different line of work, and a few sit quietly waiting for someone to decide. They are far easier to read from the sidewalk than from a map, and they are usually the oldest thing on their block.
Bernard Avenue is the spine of the city, running from Highway 97 down to Okanagan Lake, and its character changes completely along the way. The lower blocks are the busy commercial and dining stretch that closes to traffic in summer; further up it becomes an ordinary street where the pace is slower and parking is not a fight. Walking its length is the quickest way to understand how Kelowna grew from a farming and packing town into the largest city in the valley.
Visiting Former Bankhead Store
Getting there
In the Downtown neighbourhood of Kelowna.
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