5 days Ago By Michele Jarvie
It had a credit limit of $15. It was my very first credit card and the Hudson’s Bay issued it to a teenager. Sixty-five years have passed and I have many credit cards.
But The Bay holds a special place in that collection because it “trusted” a teenager. This was at a time when women had to have their husband’s or father’s signature on most, if not all, financial transactions. I still shop at The Bay but, over the years, department stores have become obsolete, if not moribund.
The Bay will join other “Canadian” companies on the rendering block. Eaton’s went bankrupt in 1999; Woodward’s in 1993; Simpson’s closed in 1991 and Sears limped along until 2018. Yet, their ghosts live on in my house: my raincoat (I lived in both Vancouver and Toronto) has a prominent Eaton’s label; the silver water jug was bought at Woodward’s.
North America’s oldest company — Hudson’s Bay was chartered in 1670 — has become irrelevant in a technology-driven world of online shopping and almost instant access and door-to-door delivery. So those of us with long and fond memories will spare more than a few moments pondering the passing of another great company. Those of us in Calgary wonder what will happen to the beautiful building at the intersection of 1st Street and 7th Avenue.
Built in 1912 and opened in August 1913, as reported in The Herald, the “white, six-storey, Chicago commercial style building with its terra cotta cladding would become a model for a western Canadian retail empire, with architecturally notable stores following in prime downtown locations in cities like Vancouver, Victoria and Winnipeg,” said Heritage Calgary historian Josh Traptow. “The first of two renovations would come in 1929, bringing with it the addition of the building’s most architecturally notable component — the arcade of polished Quebec granite and terra cotta archways with a mosaic terrazzo floor that runs along 1st Street and Stephen Avenue.” Whether The Bay rises from the ashes of its own doing or is sold off in bits and pieces, it is the end of a long and storied life.
There are apparently four bidders for its assets, including its intellectual property and iconic collection of artifacts. While there are older companies in the world, none had the stranglehold on Canada that the original Hudson’s Bay Company had. In his 1987 book, Northern Enterprise: Five Centuries of Canadian Business, University of Toronto historian Michael Bliss wrote, “The Hudson’s Bay Co.
was stodgy, cautious, almost anything but adventurous. It was not very competitive, except in spurts. But it was profitable in the long run and it survived.
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