kathleen_dailey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kathleen_dailey) wrote2025-04-25 04:02 pm
kathleen_dailey) wrote2025-04-25 04:02 pm
Farewell to Hudson's Bay
I feel like that subject line should be the title of a Stan Rogers song.
The last six Bay stores, including the Queen Street flagship in Toronto, are being liquidated.
I'm old enough to remember when The Bay was Simpson's. When I worked at Macmillan of Canada, my pals and I would sometimes walk over to Simpson's seventh-floor cafeteria at lunchtime. It featured items such as (perfectly) poached eggs on steamed spinach with hollandaise sauce, and carrot salad with raisins and celery--old people's food, we used to call it (bratty ageist young self, apologize to aged present self right this minute!). But wow, was it ever good.
For occasions when the cafeteria wasn't chi-chi enough, the Arcadian Court offered white tablecloths, heavy silver, a pianist, and menus that live on in my memory.
Simpson's also had an amazing book department with knowledgeable staff--there really wasn't much need to shop anywhere but Simpson's or Britnell's if you were looking for an interesting or hard-to-find book. And the store sold high (and medium-to-low) fashion, furniture, china and silver, rugs, linens, jewellery, pet supplies, household goods and tools--pretty much anything one needed for daily life, all under one roof.
Simpson's and Eaton's were foundational commercial and cultural institutions in Canada. I've written a lot about how much I loved the Marshall Field's store in Chicago, but the experience of in-person browsing and shopping at Simpson's and Eaton's was easily equal to a trip to Field's. I'm sad to think that the department-store experience is now pretty much a thing of the past.
The demise of The Bay is just another example of the eventual consequences of private equity ownership and leveraged buyouts. It remains to be seen whether the 1670 charter of the Hudson's Bay company will remain in Canada. What will happen to the former employees' pensions and benefits is also, as far as I can tell, unknown.
The last six Bay stores, including the Queen Street flagship in Toronto, are being liquidated.
I'm old enough to remember when The Bay was Simpson's. When I worked at Macmillan of Canada, my pals and I would sometimes walk over to Simpson's seventh-floor cafeteria at lunchtime. It featured items such as (perfectly) poached eggs on steamed spinach with hollandaise sauce, and carrot salad with raisins and celery--old people's food, we used to call it (bratty ageist young self, apologize to aged present self right this minute!). But wow, was it ever good.
For occasions when the cafeteria wasn't chi-chi enough, the Arcadian Court offered white tablecloths, heavy silver, a pianist, and menus that live on in my memory.
Simpson's also had an amazing book department with knowledgeable staff--there really wasn't much need to shop anywhere but Simpson's or Britnell's if you were looking for an interesting or hard-to-find book. And the store sold high (and medium-to-low) fashion, furniture, china and silver, rugs, linens, jewellery, pet supplies, household goods and tools--pretty much anything one needed for daily life, all under one roof.
Simpson's and Eaton's were foundational commercial and cultural institutions in Canada. I've written a lot about how much I loved the Marshall Field's store in Chicago, but the experience of in-person browsing and shopping at Simpson's and Eaton's was easily equal to a trip to Field's. I'm sad to think that the department-store experience is now pretty much a thing of the past.
The demise of The Bay is just another example of the eventual consequences of private equity ownership and leveraged buyouts. It remains to be seen whether the 1670 charter of the Hudson's Bay company will remain in Canada. What will happen to the former employees' pensions and benefits is also, as far as I can tell, unknown.