Big Way Foods in St. Pierre is getting national attention for their decision to hold off selling Christmas items until after Remembrance Day.

Store Manager Ginette Maynard says they've been getting phone calls from across the country from people thanking them for what they're doing. “We've been getting calls from places like Kelowna, Edmonton, Regina, Northwest Territories and Ottawa thanking us for doing this. It's gotten really big, I'm just blown away with the amazing response we've had.”

Maynard says it was head cashier Aurife McFarland that came up with the idea to reserve the shelves to honour our veterans.

McFarland says, “I came to work on Monday morning, these two displays were empty. Our Halloween stuff was gone, so the next stuff to go up would be our Christmas confectionery, so I thought it was a little bit too early to do that, I wanted to wait until after Remembrance Day. So I made a couple of posters that say Lest We Forget and put poppies on them. We left the shelves empty out of respect for the veterans and it blew up from there. We are reserving the shelves to honour our veterans to let them know we care.”

Maynard says the store has had more traffic because of the attention. “In the past couple of days I would say yes, we have had more traffic. We had a guy come in with a 10x15 poster of his dad and a lot of people love it. We have a whole bunch of pictures on one wall. Down one side there's a shelf where we have lest we forget with two poppies on both sides, and the other wall has no shelves at all. People have been bringing their stories and pictures of their family members. It's pretty good actually, it's a really good response.”

St. Pierre Big Way Foods will be closed on Remembrance Day November 11, 2015.