The company that built Canada is over. Who will miss Hudson’s Bay?

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For fashion designer Tu Ly, the Hudson’s Bay Company isn’t just a store. It represents security and success, starting with the place he went for winter clothes after arriving in Ottawa in 1975 as a refugee from Vietnam.

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“The extreme weather was a shock to our bodies,” recalls Ly from his home in Montreal, where he is creative director of Parasuco Jeans. A sponsor drove him, his three siblings and their mother to the apartment they would call home, and plans were made to go shopping at The Bay (as it is commonly known) the next day.

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“I had never seen anything like it,” describes Ly, who was 10 at the time. “It was hard to understand this big store with so many levels, so much light and so much buzz, and that sold everything from makeup to beds and refrigerators. It was overwhelming.”

Since the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) filed for creditor protection in March, social media platforms have been flooded with fondness for The Bay, from retail executives who began their careers there, creatives who worked on ad campaigns, and people with cottage memories of the iconic (and “itchy,” according to one Facebook poster) Hudson’s Bay point blanket. Even the judge handling HBC’s creditor protection application stated, “It is hard not to have a sense of melancholy when considering the application before me.”

The fear expressed by some of the 9,000-plus people at 80 locations across the country who are losing their jobs now that HBC will be liquidating all but six stores — three in Quebec and three in Ontario, including the flagship store in downtown Toronto — is impossible to understate. Smaller towns and cities such as Kamloops, Red Deer, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and London, Ont., will likely feel the gaping hole in their communities the most, though much of the chatter on Reddit is that people haven’t been shopping at The Bay anyway due to price resistance and lack of inventory.

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There is also a fair bit of anger aimed at the American owner of HBC, Richard Baker, who separated the Canadian operations of Hudson’s Bay, Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off 5th from a new U.S. arm called Saks Global. Many believe cash from the Canadian division helped Baker prop up the U.S. business and allowed him to buy Neiman Marcus last year for US$2.65 billion.

Younger and newer Canadians may not have the emotional attachment to North America’s oldest retailer, which, at 355 years, is older than Canada itself. At a time when there are so many options for shopping, the company hasn’t done much lately to entice them — or anyone — to its stores or thebay.com.

That makes the glory days of Hudson’s Bay, when former president and CEO Bonnie Brooks and her small but feisty group of executives led the company, stand out even more. Between 2008 and 2016, they brought a new level of excitement to the brand by opening trendy British fast-fashion brand Topshop in 10 stores from Montreal to Vancouver, revitalizing the legendary upscale designer space The Room with hot names such as Azzedine Alaïa, Thom Browne and Balmain and media-friendly events including dinners with supermodels Linda Evangelista and Stephanie Seymour.

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Brooks’ team put the signature red, yellow, green and indigo stripes on everything from canoes to cashmere. At the Queen Street flagship store in Toronto, the venerable Arcadian Court 8th floor space was restored to its original art deco lustre, there were partnerships with Oliver & Bonacini for food, and New York-based Kleinfelds of Say Yes to the Dress fame for bridal wear. Bringing bridal to The Bay was meant to capitalize on the fact that it had Canada’s largest wedding registry.

It was also during Brooks’ reign that the red maple leaf mittens, created for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, became a global hit, partly thanks to Oprah Winfrey, who wore them and gave pairs to a studio audience.

“We sold over a million of the famous red mittens in just a few months with all proceeds funding our athletes,” commented Brooks via email when asked for some of her favourite memories. “The Olympics in 2010 and the gold win for Team Canada Hockey with the entire stadium wearing HBC Olympic gear will forever stay in my heart.”

Former senior vice-president of home Evelyn Reynolds, who notes more than five million maple leaf mittens were sold in total, also lauds Brooks for launching One Day sales, which marked down an often highly coveted item for one day only. “There were people fighting over Dyson vacuum cleaners,” she recalls. “And we watched 7,000 Nespresso machines sell out before lunch.”

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“Bonnie turned Hudson’s Bay into a place where people wanted to be,” says Wayne Clark, the fashion designer known as Canada’s King of Glamour.

Brooks, who had transformed Lane Crawford in Hong Kong into a fashion destination, was used to making big statements that would increase visibility both with shoppers and designer brands that she wanted to stock. Clark recalls driving along Richmond Street in Toronto, which flanks the downtown store, and seeing a billboard-size image of Canadian supermodel Daria Werbowy in his green ruffled gown on the side of the building for a Hudson’s Bay promotion. “I nearly drove my jeep into the wall,” he laughs.

Bonnie (Brooks) turned Hudson’s Bay into a place where people wanted to be

Wayne Clark, fashion designer

His earliest Bay memories go back to the 1960s when he was a child in Calgary. “Taking the bus downtown and shopping with my mom was a big deal. Then I got my first part-time job at the library. I was underage, so they paid me cash and I remember running between Eaton’s and The Bay one whole Saturday, figuring out how I was going to spend my first 40 bucks.

“That’s when I found out I was colour blind. I bought a pair of pants and a shirt at The Bay that I thought were both khaki green. My mom said to me, ‘Do you think those match?’ Well, they didn’t. We found out my whole red perspective was off.”

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Like many in Canada who went on to careers in retail and fashion, both Ly and Clark had their earliest exposure to both by shopping at Hudson’s Bay. In Ottawa, Ly’s mother brought him with her to, as he puts it, “look at the clothes she couldn’t afford. Then we would go to a fabric store to find similar colours and prints and she would make her own dresses. I was like her little assistant, learning to sew when I was 12, and helping her choose fabrics and trims.”

Later, when Ly was in high school, he would always walk back home through The Bay. “It was so pretty and glamorous and it smelled so nice,” he says. “The Bay was the apex of fashion for me at the time. There was no other option.”

Seeing Canadian brands Alfred Sung and Wayne Clark at the store sparked an idea. “I remember thinking, ‘That could be me.’ And eventually my first collection out of Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University) did sell at The Bay.”

In his early 20s, Clark did window dressing for Hudson’s Bay when they opened their second store in Calgary. A team was brought in from Montreal for training and offered Clark a job there. After a year in Montreal, Clark went to design school at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont., and launched his label, which was worn by Jane Fonda, Cindy Crawford and Rihanna. He still shops at The Bay for underwear and Dior’s Eau Sauvage deodorant.

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For Indigenous people, HBC has a very different meaning: colonizer. On May 2, 1670, King Charles II of England granted a charter establishing the Hudson’s Bay Company and claiming millions of square kilometres inhabited by Inuit and First Nations people.

“HBC would not exist without our communities,” remarks Sage Paul, an urban Dene woman, designer, artist and founder of Indigenous Fashion Arts, which holds events promoting Indigenous art and design. Exploitation of Indigenous trappers and the transmission of diseases that resulted from trading point blankets have been well documented. “I do remember as a child, my parents telling me, ‘We don’t shop there,’” says Paul.

HBC has been working on reparations. Since 2022, proceeds of sales of the iconic point blanket have been donated to the Oshki Wupoowane, a fund for Indigenous cultural, artistic and education initiatives in Canada. The same year, HBC donated its downtown Winnipeg building to the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which represents 32 Anishinaabe and Dakota Nations in what is now southern Manitoba. The building is being redeveloped as a space that prioritizes First Nations cultures, economic development and community services, though projected costs have swelled to $310 million, with only $142 million pledged in cash, loans and tax relief by three levels of government.

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It’s amusing to think that Canada was born out of a fashion trend, but it was. Back in the 17th century, beaver hats were a must-have for the elite in Europe and Russia, but the critters had been hunted to near extinction there. In 1668, voyageur Médard Chouart Des Groseilliers travelled with the blessing of King Charles II to the south shore of James Bay, where he traded beaver pelts with the Cree.

Trading posts were established, more Europeans arrived, colonization blazed through the continent and, in 1867, Canada was born. It was also in that century, when more affluence increased demand for housewares and textiles to sew into clothing, that the trading posts became retail outlets.

“It really is a company that became the country,” says Reynolds, the Hudson’s Bay executive, who is British and had to learn Canada’s history for her citizenship exam. “I don’t think there is anywhere in the world where anybody can say that other than here.”

Fast-forward to the latter half of the 20th century, when urban sprawl gave rise to shopping malls that required anchor tenants to draw consumers. As a department store, HBC was a prime candidate for the low price-per-square-footage sweetheart deals that landlords were offering. It was a win-win-win situation — for a while.

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Then along came the category killers such as Best Buy and Toys ‘R’ Us, siphoning electronics and toy consumers away from department stores. That department store retail model is done and dusted now that we have access to anything we want from anywhere in the world, and providers such as Amazon that can make it all happen in a flash. Declining department store sales — in HBC’s case to a point where it owes nearly $1 billion to creditors — meant less investment in merchandise, which meant less to buy, which meant even less reason to visit in person or online. Broken escalators, nasty change rooms and scarcity of sales staff have been lethal at a time when the only reason to leave the house to shop is for an Instagram-worthy experience.

I hope the history is not lost. It’s not all beautiful but it is our Canadian culture

Sage Paul

Even The Room went sadly quiet. Last year, it brought back star “glam enabler” Nicholas Mellamphy, who had revived The Room during Brooks’ tenure, as creative director-at-large to try to rekindle the excitement.

“What’s missing from Canadian retail is the magic that makes you want to go in, where you gasp at how beautiful a store is, and it makes you want to shop,” says jewelry designer Alan Anderson, who was part of a 26-member display team at Toronto’s Queen Street flagship from 1993 to 2005.

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Anderson remembers pulling all-nighters to transform the main floor into a forest of cherry blossoms to welcome spring. For a Dior fragrance launch called Dolce Vita, the store and windows were done up with banquet tables elaborately topped with candelabras, fruit and flowers.

“This was the age of Rootstein mannequins, the Rolls-Royce of mannequins which were lifelike and painted to look like beautiful women, and antiques from the Simpsons’ prop department (Hudson’s Bay purchased the Robert Simpson Company, another historic Canadian department store, in 1978 and later converted some of the stores to The Bay) and fairly good budgets.

“In the ’90s, we did the 12 days of Christmas all along Queen Street and down Yonge Street with 10 ladies dancing and nine pipers piping and these big Marie Antoinette wigs out of paper. Another time we had an incredible Wayne Clark taupe and white polka-dotted ball gown with a train and we had the mannequin walking a whole bunch of fake Dalmatians with the same-coloured spots.”

Anderson laments the cost-cutting that has led to boring shopping environments, as well as licensees who rent floor space and come with their own visual agendas. “Instead of having one person’s overall vision, the licensees dictate the look and feel,” he says.

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“Unfortunately, numbers people have taken over the industry, and they justify everything with it being against the bottom line. They don’t put a value on creativity,” Anderson adds.

Many are hopeful that HBC’s demise is an opportunity to modernize the shopping experience. “Department stores are obsolete, but I would love a cool concept store that keeps the heritage aspect,” says Paul, the Dene woman. “I hope the history is not lost. It’s not all beautiful but it is our Canadian culture.”

Leaning into the current pro-Canada movement and making it easier to shop Canadian-made products with an emphasis on Indigenous makers also makes sense for what remains of HBC. Or any other Canadian retailer. A notable number of social media posters mention Canadian-chain Simons as a model for what a department store should be today — well-priced and hip.

“I believed in Hudson’s Bay Company deeply and continue to do so and have every hope that it will return to Canadian arms who will cherish and honour it as Canada’s national treasure,” says Brooks.

And let’s bring back those mittens.

Bernadette Morra is a luxury lifestyle writer and former editor-in-chief of FASHION magazine.

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