For about 18 years, Grant Slemmestad helped bring one of Toronto’s most cherished Christmas displays to life — the famous holiday windows at Hudson’s Bay’s flagship store.
Every year until 2023, he and the once-venerated retailer’s visual team transformed the Bay’s five windows along Queen Street at Yonge into festive miniature worlds, carefully arranging hundreds of toys and reindeer on moving tracks, scattering sawdust beneath the tiny elves sawing logs, and crawling through fireplaces to adjust the chandelier bulbs.
While many Torontonians, like Slemmestad, feared the festive windows would go dark for good after Hudson’s Bay closed down in June, the defunct retailer’s landlord, Cadillac Fairview, says it will preserve the decades-long tradition this December.
The real estate firm has leased the windows on Yonge St. to a major brand, which it is not naming yet. The windows will come to life on Dec. 14 and run through the New Year.
“Repurposing the windows for Christmas is a really smart idea,” said 70-year-old Slemmestad. A few weeks ago, he commented on a Cadillac Fairview employee’s LinkedIn post: “Looking forward to seeing what someone else can dream up. Dream on. Have fun.”
The tradition of holiday windows has drawn heavy foot traffic and countless curious onlookers downtown ever since Simpsons, the department store that occupied the Queen St. site before Hudson’s Bay, first created them in the early 1900s.
Cadillac Fairview said in a statement to the Star that it is “proud to revive the holiday window experience” and preserve a piece of Toronto’s holiday heritage to keep the Yonge and Queen crossing animated once again this season.
“It’s a sentimental piece of how Canadians feel in those cities when they walk downtown during the holidays. So I think it’s a great move,” said retail analyst Bruce Winder.
“Torontonians will feel good that the tradition continues, that they haven’t lost that part of their childhood or memory nostalgia.”
But, he noted, it all depends on whether the new windows keep the spirit of the originals. “It could really turn into a magnificent marketing event,” he said.
Cadillac Fairview is still soliciting partners for the two windows on Bay St. and seven on Richmond St. this holiday season (five have been leased to yet-to-be-named brands), while the Queen St. windows remain unavailable due to their proximity to Ontario Line construction.
The landlord said it wants to position those windows as a year-round experiential marketing platform for external brands, cultural institutions and charities.
No new tenants have been confirmed for the former Hudson’s Bay flagship store location since the eight-level landmark shuttered its doors this past June.
“I think what they’re doing is to preserve sort of the tradition so that when they do redevelop space, people won’t forget it,” said Winder, adding that he would estimate the value of those display windows in the tens of thousands of dollars — free revenue for the landlord simply by leasing them out.
Since 2005, installing the Christmas windows has been a highlight of the year and a source of pure joy that Slemmestad looked forward to during his time at Hudson’s Bay.
Over the years, the visual specialist has watched the windows’ artistic themes evolve — from Narnia in the early 2000s, to Victorian, enchanted forest, snow globe and robotic motifs.
Slemmestad said his all-time favourite was the Santa’s Factory window, which ran for eight years. He was always fascinated by the little details: elves wrapping gifts that spilled from tables onto the floor in front of a giant clock, visitors wandering through a candy shop, and a couple dancing behind a curtain — visible only as shadows from a room above.
The delicate holiday installations required immense effort, and mistakes sometimes slipped through, turning into amusing moments. Slemmestad recalled one year in which an elf was polishing Santa’s sleigh, installed on a moving lift. The sleigh had been placed a little too close to the elf so that it ended up clipping the tiny peak of his baseball cap.
Slemmestad said he doesn’t think Torontonians will see windows like these — purely artistic, not product-driven or promotional — downtown again for a long time.
Historically, only the Queen St. windows were designated as animated holiday displays, while those on Bay and Richmond Streets focused more on Hudson’s Bay merchandise.
“I’m not worried about the brand. I just want somebody to do something that’s interesting,” he said. “I hope for the sake of Cadillac and the people of Toronto, they do something that’s a very Christmas thing.”
