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| Almost gone Toronto, ON April 2025 This photo originally shared on Instagram |
Not everyone remembers The Hudson’s Bay Company in the same way. For every fuzzy mental image of multistripe point blankets and pilgrimages to see Christmas window displays in giant downtown stores, there are mirrors that reflect a different reality. Of abuses of Indigenous communities at the hands of colonial oppressors.
And yet, the impending implosion of the 355-year-old retailer represents another inflection point in Canadian history.
Books will be written about how The Bay ended up here, how generations of retail leadership ebbed away in the face of shifting demographics and technologies, about how its final chapter under private equity ownership echoed the trajectory of so many other companies who were strip-mined for the benefit of short-term-focused investors. So I certainly won’t try to document it all here.
But late on a Saturday night, I walked out of one of the largest malls in Canada and felt compelled to stop and take in the logo, likely for the last time.
This was a force that dominated Canadian life for as long as any of us can remember, and its disappearance marks another milestone on a path toward an uncertain future where icons are ever more difficult to find in the night sky.
#toronto #ontario #canada #yorkdale #hudsonsbay #thebay #retail #building #architecture #architecturephotography #buildingporn #architectureporn #night #photography #apple #iphone #iphone16 #shotoniphone
Related:
Emptiness at the edge of suburbia, May 2022
Empty downtown storefront, March 2022
Empty store late at night, November 2021
Convenience store at night, April 2021
Kentucky Fried Abandonment, March 2021
Abandoned strip mall, June 2020
Tim is still dead, February 2020
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