3 days ago
Will Hudson's Bay's 355-Year-Old Charter Go to the Highest Bidder?
The end came a little bit early for the sprawling Hudson's Bay Company store in downtown Ottawa on Sunday when the oldest company in North America stopped trading after 355 years.
At about 5 o'clock, I watched as the doors were locked about an hour ahead of schedule. There was little point in holding out for the final hour. Aside from heavily discounted jewelry, which was brought in for the liquidation sale, there was almost no merchandise left on the store's five remaining sales floors. Earlier in the day, the leftovers had been priced at $1.
[Read: A 355-Year-Old Company That Once Owned One-Third of Canada Is Shutting Down]
The shoppers left inside after the doors had been locked consisted of a long line of jewelry buyers and a handful of people dithering about whether they really needed a mannequin or a store fixture.
My grandmother had a career selling women's 'foundation garments' at a department store (not the Bay), and before university, I sold cameras at a Simpsons store that was later absorbed into Hudson's Bay. So I found it a melancholy scene.
But there was still some final levity. To the amusement of two plainclothes security guards — people once called floorwalkers — among the people rapping on the doors to be let in for a final visit was a woman they described as a 'frequent flier,' a recidivist shoplifter.
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