by June Chua, Nov. 5, 2004

I was 16 when I worked for the West Edmonton Mall at the dolphin lagoon. I sat in a tiny shack charging people $4 to enter. One evening, there was a sharp rap on my window, and I looked up to see a bald, old man with bulging eyes and a hard stare. It was Papa Ghermezian, the patriarch of the Ghermezian family of four brothers – the mall's developers.

Papa was a familiar sight to mall employees, always buzzing around on his scooter. He was the unofficial mascot of the mall. He frightened me because he had the power to fire me. Papa asked my name, which I gave.

"How long have you worked here?"

"Two months."

"I haven't seen you before."

"I usually work at the Deep Sea Adventure."

He gave a harrumph, nodded and headed away on his scooter. Papa Ghermezian never bothered me again.

This memory billowed up from my mind when I heard the first covered mall to be built in Canada in 14 years had just opened. The Vaughan Mills Mall, north of Toronto, claims to be 1.2 million square feet of entertainment, leisure and shopping. I wonder how it compares with the West Edmonton Mall. WEM was also touted as a fun destination, complete with wave pool, ice rink, hotel and 800 stores.

I haven't been to a mall in at least six months. I can't stand them. They're artificial environments designed to empty your wallet. And I know of what I speak: I once kept track of my spending habits for a year and discovered I was losing $200 a month buying things I didn't need. The inordinate time I've spent in malls during my lifetime and the fact I suffer from retail weakness are what keep me away. In North America, the mall is where we live – what does that say about us?

Like many in this country, I grew up in malls. My memories are mostly happy ones: wandering the boutiques with friends and spending my allowance on the perfect piece of clothing or the hottest new shoes. My first job was at Grandma Lee's at WEM, making sandwiches and slicing bread for customers. I also wore a frilly, orange-checked apron as part of the uniform. Here I was, an Asian in a Southern-American- style outfit serving white bread to mostly white bread people. I loved it.

But my love of the mall soured that summer when the roller coaster malfunctioned and three people where thrown with their carriage onto the cement floor. My friend Christina worked at the amusement section at the time it happened. "I'll never forget the sound one guy's fiancée made when they told her he was dead," she told me later. She resigned the next day.

It wasn't the first death at the mall, several dolphins had also died. It seems the mall is no place for living creatures. After that, I began to see the mall in a harsher light – the haggard moms with their screaming kids, the teenage prostitutes, the mall security bullies with their thick necks and truncheons. I wonder if this is what Victor Gruen had in mind. Gruen is the grandfather of the modern mall. He created the first covered mall in 1956 – Southdale, outside of Minneapolis.

Gruen was a Jew who fled to the U.S. from Austria in 1938 to escape the Nazis. He was also a socialist who envisioned the mall as a place where people could experience a sense of community. His first few malls were elegant, open places with fountains, sculptures and luxuriant landscaping. After Southdale, with rampant sprawl and special tax credits, gigantic malls took over Gruen's vision and the suburbs.

The biggest mall in the United States is the 520-store Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minn. It's the No. 1 attraction for American travellers and it gets more visitors annually than all the U.S. national parks combined. The mall was co-developed by the Ghermezian brothers.

Gruen wanted people to come together at the mall to interact, much like the old European town squares. He designed for humans, not consumers. I think he would be horrified to find out about big-box retailing. These pit stops of purchasing are the Franken-children of the mall. Everything is built around the car. Gruen detested cars. Horrified by the "wasting seas of parking" spawned by his mall concept, he returned to Austria to live out the rest of his days.

Both the West Edmonton Mall and the Mall of America have experienced decline in the 1990s, forced to add new attractions and upgrades (a church, free internet, better play areas for kids, etc.). Why do we need another mega mall?

Urban developers say people crave an experience. In Europe, mall owners are hiring architects to design malls with more interesting styles, greenery, art, and with schools and offices appended. When I saw the Vaughan mall on television, I was disappointed. It was another concrete box, surrounded by 6,000 parking spaces. Gruen's ideas seem beyond the reach of North American developers.

The architect of the modern mall died in Vienna in 1980. Jacob "Papa" Ghermezian passed away 20 years later. My guess is Papa Ghermezian is whizzing around on his scooter in that Big Mall in the Sky, while Gruen just keeps turning in his grave.