About the journey

It started as a silly idea. I wanted to visit the stores I frequented as a child (and an adult) in and around Toronto to document the final days of Hudson’s Bay for myself. I also had some vacation time coming up and rewards points to use so I decided to visit a few stores across the country. Before my journey was over, I learned that the plan to save six stores in the Toronto and Montreal areas fell apart.

I ended up taking hundreds of photos and choosing which ones to post was extremely difficult. I’m a writer, not a photographer.

About HBC

Hudson’s Bay Company has a long history. It was incorporated on May 2, 1670 and played a role in colonizing the country. Its relationship with Indigenous people is complicated to say the least.

But Hudson’s Bay wasn’t always based in Canada; it was headquartered in London for 300 years. During that time, HBC’s first department store opened in 1881. After becoming a retailer, the company was also involved in the natural resources and real estate sectors through Hudson’s Bay Oil and Gas and Markborough Properties, respectively. Conglomerates were a fad back then.

In the 1970s, Hudson’s Bay was the subject of a takeover battle by two of Canada’s richest families (the Westons and the Thomsons; the Thomsons won and later sold their stake). Over the years, HBC bought Zellers, Simpsons, Morgan’s, Freimans, Woodward’s, Towers, and Kmart Canada.

The retailer was taken over by South Carolina businessman Jerry Zucker in 2006 for $1.1 billion. Following his death, NRDC Equity Partners acquired Hudson’s Bay for “slightly” more than what he paid. Under private equity ownership, the company sold the Zellers leases to Target for $1.825 billion and Cadillac Fairview purchased both the flagship store and the Simpson Tower in Toronto for $650 million.

Things were looking good. Hudson’s Bay went upmarket, it opened stores in The Netherlands, and bought luxury retailer Saks. But the stores in The Netherlands were losing money and closed two years after opening. The Home Outfitters chain was also shut down. While some of the Canadian stores were renovated (such as Queen Street), others became dilapidated.

In the end, the company was deep in debt. Vendors weren’t paid on time, rent was overdue, elevators and escalators went out of service, and the air conditioning wasn’t turned on (or working) in the warmer months at its stores. Hudson’s Bay stores closed down for good on June 1, 2025.

More importantly, nearly 10,000 employees were out of work.

About Canadian department stores

Before the demise of Hudson’s Bay, Sears Canada and Eaton’s shared similar fates. While Holt Renfrew and Simons still exist, there’s no longer a full-line department store with locations across Canada that caters to the middle class. The U.S. still has Macy’s and JCPenney (there were just five Sears stores left in the U.S. as of late 2025) while the U.K. has John Lewis and Marks & Spencer.