“For a while, it had seemed that Rankin’s, like many family-owned stores in rural Nova Scotia, was doomed to be swept away by the Walmarts and progress. But then we noticed how people from away valued our traditional handcrafts. That led me to set up a retail space in the store’s underused upstairs. We call it Gasper’s Cove Crafters: A Community Co-op, a place where anyone in the community who made things (which described most of us) could sell on consignment.”