That's cool mate, so you can physically still walk into a radio shack store over there in Canada? Do they still have much to do with hobby electronics these days or is it just mainly an outlet for selling TV's and computers etc?
Here in Australia we used to have "Tandy Electronics" which was basically our version of "Radio Shack". There was stores everywhere back in the 1990's and possibly into the early 2000's also. Sadly they all closed quite a few years ago now. When I was younger and into electronics I would frequent all these types of stores before the days of mobile phones and the internet. Was a different era I guess. It's funny that back then like most things in life you just think they are always going to be there all the time. Then before you know it they are all gone.
Another local electronics retailer I also miss was called "Dick Smith Electronics". It's probably these stores and their hobby kits that got me started into electronics back in the early 1990's. It also helped that we also had an "electronics" class at high school where we actually constructed and learnt about basic electronics all with the help of the kits that were available at the time from "Dick Smith Electronics". Good times back then. Cheers!