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Each week, Report on Business editors choose five stories that shouldn't be missed. Here are the 'must reads' for the week of Jan. 11, 2010.

In the 1960s and '70s, the Leuong Jung grocery store was the place to shop and be seen in Montreal's Chinatown. About the size of a convenience store, it sold Chinese candy, dishes, pressed duck and Chinese bacon and lap cheung, a specialty beef and pork Chinese sausage that David Lee made in his second-floor meat-manufacturing shop above the grocery store. His products were exported throughout Canada, the United States and England. . . Like many entrepreneurs, David Lee was so busy taking care of his family and his business, he didn't have time to talk about its future.

Le Massif's setting is breathtaking: a commanding vista high above the broad St. Lawrence River, the mountain nestled in the pristine beauty of the Charlevoix region about an hour's drive northeast of Quebec City. Local residents hope Daniel Gauthier keeps it that way, even as the entrepreneur launches a major expansion of the small ski resort.

The Hermès store on Toronto's famed mink mile did something in December it had never done before: It brought in an engraver to personalize fragrance bottles with a customer's initials, flowers or hearts. It was a free service for customers at the upscale retailer, one that the well-heeled appreciated. Not bad for business either, as overall sales at the store almost doubled from a year earlier. . . The move by Hermes is emblematic of how the carriage trade is more aggressively courting consumers after the downturn as the business model changes. Retailers are finding they need to be more attentive - provide random acts of kindness, as it's known at Holt Renfrew - or risk losing customers spooked by the recession.

The Rosseau has everything you'd expect from a high-end resort perched on some of the most desirable vacation property in Canada - glitzy condo units featuring flat-panel televisions and rustic fireplaces, a glamorous spa for massages and pedicures and a huge conference centre available for weddings and board meetings. . . Now the Rosseau is up for sale, having been pushed into receivership. The sale is a stark reminder of looming problems in the commercial real estate sector, where loans taken out in better times are expiring and companies are finding themselves unable to make payments that were based on cash flow thought to be never-ending and asset prices that would always go up.

Paul Giannelia has made a career of toppling traditions. He was, after all, the agent who ended PEI's isolation from mainland Canada by erecting the $1-billion Confederation Bridge in the 1990s. Now the veteran project manager has another target in his sights - the ubiquitous wood poles that carry the bulk of North America's electrical power grid. The age of wood is ending, he proclaims, thus escalating the debate polarizing the utility industry: wood versus composite materials.