The Bay: Going Away

[dewline]

The Bay was a retail fixture of my life. I didn't expect to outlive the company.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/hudsons-bay-8300-employees-june-1-1.7544639

Comments

[kathleen_dailey]

I've written about this before, and I thought I was more or less over it by now, but when I saw news pics of the empty sales floors and all the shrink-wrapped mannequins, fixtures, etc., it made me feel bereft once again.

I know that one could say that The Bay was just another mismanaged retail chain, and that everything has a life span. But it was such an important part of personal and national history for all of us. That it should have existed and mostly thrived for 350-plus years but been unable, ultimately, to survive the capitalistic ruthlessness of the 21st century--it's incredibly sad.

I had thought about going down to the Queen Street store a couple of weeks ago just to say goodbye, but on balance I'm glad that I didn't. All my memories of The Bay are still fun, uplifting ones.

[sabotabby]

Good riddance. I feel bad for the employees that lost their jobs but that company ought to have been sold off for reparations generations ago for what they did.

[dewline]

And now that sale can't happen.

[flemmings]

I'm still sad about Eaton's and Simpson's, which were my childhood and teenage shops. The Bay was too pricy for me.

[thewayne]

Talk about a piece of history! So many stores of my youth are gone, and that's just over the span of 5-6 decades. The only thing that seems to endure is fast food. That really doesn't bear thinking about from a societal POV.

[neowolf2]

Fast food chains are also in trouble.

[dewline]

There does seem to be a bit of "churn" of those chains, doesn't there?

[thewayne]

Oh, definitely!  Some of the big restaurant chains are collapsing for various reasons along with the true FF stores.  Der Weinerschnitzel was just thrown a lifeline by Walmart apparently.

[blogcutter]

I'm sad about the demise of department stores in general. The Bay, Simpsons-Sears, Eaton's, Murphy Gamble, Ogilvy's. I don't think we have any big department stores like that in town any more. Yes, we can decry all our colonialist history and all the oppression of the fur trade and so on but honestly, The Bay hasn't really been Canadian for ages, anyway (and before anyone attacks me, I'm not saying that excuses the many shames of our history). It wasn't even much of a presence in Ottawa until the early 1970s - the Bay stores were all Freiman's stores until then. We did have a Morgan's store on Sparks Street, which was owned by HBC, but it was quite small.

What definitely concerns me is the livelihood of the Bay's former employees, as well as the way important historical artefacts are to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

[jsburbidge]

Shopping at the Bay in the last few years was an exercise in frustration. If I went in looking for something in particular - a jacket, say, or underwear - I had to wander among multiple locations organized by brand in order to compare items. The last time I was there to buy underwear, the staff person told me that Stanfield's didn't make that type any more. (They did, easily found online.) They lost my custom long before they went out of business.

I do not recall the Bay as a retail presence until they bought out Simpsons; they were certainly not a part of my childhood (and we tended to shop at Eatons in any case.)

More generally, the Bay - which passed through several hands, including Thompson, before its current incarnation - has effectively nothing in common with The Company of Gentlemen and Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay, even if they did retain the branding with the blankets.