Empty shelves and inactive mechanical staircases welcomed buyers on Monday as they passed through Hudson’s Bay Stores looking for good deals and perhaps a piece of history.
In Edmonton, some racks with two bay locations have been picked clean because a handful of older men and women benefited from 40, 50, 60 and even 70% discount.
The company’s wool covers with green, red, yellow and indigo stripes on a white background have been largely exhausted. The covers were first manufactured in the middle of the 19th century.
“It’s a shame that cries,” said buyer Susan Carpenter. “It will be a big loss.”
Carpenter, originally from Montreal, said that his grandmother worked as a standard telephone operator in a largest city store in Quebec. Carpenter also worked during the Christmas season in 1971.
“It was a big problem,” she said.
“It is still, for me, a big problem.”
Hudson’s Bay Co., The oldest retailer in the country seeks to fully liquidate its shelvesPutting thousands of Jeopardy jobs in more than 80 stores across the country.
A hearing at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ended on Monday without a final decision to know if it will allow the company to liquidate the $ 315 million in inventory that it has left.
Amanda Valette, a buyer in Edmonton, said that when she was a baby, her mother dropped her off the daycare in store while she was shopping in the 1960s.
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She said that even if it was sad to see the store leave, it was time because the prices had become too expensive.
“People are not going to a department store to spend $ 300 on a blouse,” she said.
In downtown Vancouver, a small group of customers waited outside the opening of the Baie’s six-story flagship store. Among them, Julie Bagyan, a brand loyalist for over 35 years.
She said Hudson’s Bay was the first department store she met after moving to the Philippine Canada in 1988.
“My best memory is when they have sales the day after Christmas, and I aligned myself for this because I would get good discounts on the brand items I like to buy,” said Bagyan.
Buyers traveled a Hudson bay in Toronto on Monday, March 17, 2025.
The Canadian Press / Christopher Katsarov
Inside the store – the flagship product of British Columbia among the 16 branches in the province – it seemed to be a matter as usual. But neither the elevator nor the mechanical staircases worked, leaving customers to cover six stairs to reach the men’s clothing section at the top.
Historian Stephen Bown says that losing the bay is the end of an institution that has existed for 1670 – almost 200 years before the birth of Canada.
“This is an architectural physical portal (and) to understand the whole past,” said Bown, author of The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire.
No business has been more deeply linked to Canadian history, for better and the worst, he said. This is a more poignant point in recent times when US President Donald Trump has openly thought about Canada’s annexation and transforming it into an American “51st state”.
When the border between Canada and the United States was under adjustment, said Bown, Hudson’s Bay Co. provided a “legal and cultural base” for the argument of Great Britain against the conviction of the United States that it was the right of the country to control North America.
“In a sense, at the time, it prevented us from becoming the 51st state, although it would have been more like the 46th state at the time,” said the author based in Canmore, in Albert.
Nevertheless, the fall in the company means that Canada would lose an artifact that precedes its existence, said Bown.
“Without a reminder visible to the fact that it existed, I am afraid that it is lost.”
–The files of the Canadian press’ Aaron Sousa, David Boles, Brittany Hobson and Nono Shen
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press