The grand dame of Canadian department stores is on life support. We’ve seen it before, but this time it’s more emotional.
It’s hard not to think of The Bay, goes the old, once-successful marketing slogan. But these days, the grand dame of Canadian department stores is lying in the business world’s equivalent of the ICU, her rattling cough perhaps indicating her final moments. Analysts predict that the chain may need to close half or more of its 80 stores in Canada as part of a life-saving remedy.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this movie. In 2017, Sears Canada sought and received creditor protection that saw it first close nearly 60 stores across Canada and, within months, all of them.
But this hurts a little more and will hurt Ottawa in particular.
For better and worse, the story of the Hudson’s Bay Company, established nearly two centuries before the nation was born, is the story of Canada. Its retail stores stretch back to the latter half of the 19th century, with its full-line department stores dating to 1913. The Bay has essentially been with us forever. The chain’s current insolvency, coincidentally coming to a head as consumers lead a rabid buy-Canadian campaign in the face of U.S. tariffs, is a painful reminder of how tenuous the things we take for granted can be against shifting tides.
For generations, The Bay’s stores stood as important shopping destinations, but also meeting places: recall, for instance, the café that was once part of The Bay’s Rideau Street store.
One shopper, Maria McMullin, remarked on that lost aspect to me earlier this week. “It’s a pity,” she said. “My friends and I would always meet there, at the coffee shop, before going to wherever we were going.
Evening Update
“The Bay is an institution,” she added, “one of those things we think of as purely Canadian, even if it’s not.”
It speaks volumes about the long relationship between Canadians and The Bay that Ontario Superior Court of Justice Judge Peter Osborne, who presided over the department store’s request for creditor protection, noted that it was “hard not to have a sense of melancholy” about the situation.
According to one Bay employee at the Rideau Street location — Ottawa’s flagship store — many customers who heard last week of the company’s woes came in over the weekend and purchased products bearing The Bay’s familiar green, yellow, red and black stripes, perhaps seeking keepsakes of a disappearing era.
It’s also hard not to think of The Bay’s employees. The company didn’t respond to an email query about its Ottawa-area stores or how many employees it has here, but with five locations in the national capital region — at Bayshore, St. Laurent, Place d’Orléans, the Rideau Centre and Les Promenades Gatineau — likely hundreds of local jobs are on the line.
Meanwhile, some customers are already in an elegiac mood.
Norma Enns, a Gracefield, Que. resident who for 25 years lived on York Street, laments what she feels may be the end of a retail institution. “It’s one of the oldest stores, historically, but also one of the cornerstones of the ByWard Market,” she said. “Even before the Rideau Centre expanded and doubled in size, this was the place we all came to.”
As a teenager in Toronto, Enns worked at Eaton’s, a comparable department store. “There was Eaton’s, Sears across the street, and the Hudson’s Bay, and those three were where you went to find all your basic needs.”
The Bay’s fall from retail dominance is a testament to how much and how quickly the sector’s landscape has changed. The growing trend towards e-commerce, hastened by a pandemic that also chilled in-person shopping, and now a budding trade war with the U.S., have all been cited as factors in the diminishment of The Bay’s fortunes. Younger shoppers never really adopted the experience of department-store shopping, while, along with groceries, big-box warehouse retailers such as Costco offer many products for which shoppers once relied on department stores.
And as each intrusion chipped away at the The Bay’s success, customers noted the telltale signs: less stock and selection. Fewer sales staff.
“You used to get high-quality products at a reasonable price, but it’s not at the value end of the spectrum anymore,” said ByWard Market resident Stirling Dyer, who grew up shopping at HBC with his family. “These days I’ll only go in when I’ve been unable to find what I’m looking for somewhere else.”
Even Harry and Eleanor Pietersma, who describe themselves as “committed and discerning” shoppers who support local whenever they can, note a decline. The couple lives in Iroquois, about an hour’s drive south of Ottawa, and regularly drives to the ByWard Market to shop at such places as Lapointe’s, La Bottega, The Clarendon Tavern and The Bay. But they cite the increasing difficulty of finding what they need as stores, including The Bay, reduce the amount of stock on their shelves.
“What we’re seeing is tragic,” says Eleanor.
It’s premature to speculate on what happens next. There will certainly be opportunities. The 31,000-square-metre Rideau Street location, for example, is right beside the planned 2,000-seat live-music History venue. If it is earmarked for closure, its large footprint might open the door for many businesses that could benefit. The Market is already in the process of revamping itself.
But those are discussions perhaps better left for another day.
In the meantime, let’s remember and celebrate the important part of Ottawa that The Bay has been over the years, and may yet be. Because don’t it always go to show, we don’t know what we’ve got til it’s (almost) gone?
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