Leong: Hudson's Bay is dead but its aspirations can live on to help build Canada
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Of course, much has changed in the 115 years since the publication of Bryce's book.
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The Hudson's Bay Company managed to survive decades of colonial conflicts; a transformation from a quasi-governmental commercial monopoly to a pure business in a competitive marketplace; several global economic crises, including the Great Depression; and two world wars — somehow finding a way to adapt and meet the various challenges of the day.
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Alas, it was the strains of retail coupled with what's been described by some as an unhealthy corporate union that eventually caused HBC to spiral into insolvency after more than three-and-a-half centuries as a going concern.
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In 2008, The Bay was taken over by a U.S. private equity firm that might not have had the necessary desire, interest or expertise to keep the Hudson's Bay Company alive.
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HBC had become just another company — the latest in a long line of historic department stores and retailers in Canada and the United States whose stories have come to a sudden end over the last few decades.
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In the The Bay's final hours, watching last-minute shoppers rummaging for a good liquidation deal amid the dregs of a dwindling stock of merchandise, it might have been difficult to trace the long path through the company's history to the same but very different corporate entity — The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson's Bay — that held great power and sway over North America and the course of its history.
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The path behind might be hard to see but it's there. And so is the path forward but sadly, HBC won't be the one to navigate it.
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Given the current political context and an uncertain trade relationship with the United States, Canadians are expressing a newfound desire for nation-building projects and interest in reconnecting with national institutions.
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It seems fitting that HBC's and Canada's economic motivations after the company's surrender of Rupert's Land in 1870 very much mirror the rekindled current of nationalism we are experiencing now in 2025.
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