The High Street is Dying

                                               Image via Vancouver Archives

The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay, founded in 1670 also known as The Hudson’s Bay Company, HBC, The Bay, had been operating in Vancouver at Georgia and Granville for approximately 138 years. The Bay had other locations around the lower mainland, but this the was the Flagship store in British Columbia. There were other department stores in Vancouver, Eaton’s, Sears, Woodward’s were probably the largest and much higher end than Zellers (owned by HBC), Woolworths, Woolco, K-Mart, Fields etc.

The Bay ceased operations in June of 2025. Eaton’s, Sears and Woodward’s are long gone. What was once a thriving group of businesses located throughout the province and in fact the country, has been reduced to a few. Walmart, Simons, Holt Renfrew and some others, but most have closed the doors or moved back to the U.S. - Target, Nordstrom. Even Lowes, though not a department store, couldn’t make it work in Canada.

I loved shopping in department stores. They were beautifully decorated, especially seasonal decorations like Christmas. They had quality products and a good variety. The Bay’s Housewares dept downstairs was another favorite. Never an issue if you had a problem, you could always return it. The ground floor of The Bay store downtown was always fragrant as that was where the fragrance section was. And, the service was pretty good as I remember. I was once returned a pair of leather gloves for a larger size after Christmas one year. The lady returned the gloves even after I told her that all I needed was a larger size. She then sold me the correct size at the boxing day sale price.

What happened here in Canada? As of 2020 there were about 6000 department stores of various sizes operating in the U.S. In Japan there are about 72 companies operating in 178 locations. My Japanese source, Super Ikematsu has said that there are department stores everywhere in Japan. Around train stations particularly.  

And one other thing, Sears, which had a booming catalogue business in Canada had a decades long head start on Amazon, presumably saw the internet and were paying attention to the retail landscape. Somehow though, they did not anticipate the rise of the online space, and the potential of online retail sales.

Now I understand that we do not have a large population in Canada vs. the U.S. or Japan, but you would think with 30-40 million people across the southern border we could support the department store model. But maybe not. Let me know what you think.