Catalogue of Canadian Catalogues: Shop at Home from Hundreds of Mail Order Sources

Tony Thompson was a Toronto-based freelance journalist.

It takes a brave soul to bring out a consumer directory. Inevitably the first edition will have omissions. Over time, of course, the publishers will be told of their errors and subsequent editions can eventually become valuable tools to those who need them.

Both They Deliver and Catalogue of Canadian Catalogues suffer from glaring gaps. At $7.95 each, it seems an expensive way to obtain less than the whole story, especially as much of the information is available free.

This is especially true of They Deliver, which concentrates on the Metro Toronto area, which is well served not only by the Yellow Pages directory but also the freely delivered “Community Directories.” They Deliver might be useful if it gave some qualitative advice on the standard of service to be expected, rather than factual but incomplete listings.

For instance, one wonders why neither book mentions shopping by phone through the Sears catalogue — they’ve been around long enough, surely.

Occasionally an item produces a mild titter. In Catalogue we learn that Computer Parts Galore Inc., Toronto, will send us free their one-page catalogue. A one-page catalogue? Mercifully, it’s free.

With the advent of computerized home shopping through TV and the modem certain to take off in the near future, both these guides will be redundant by the time they get it right.

Not only do they provide too little, but they are both probably too late and certainly much too expensive.