When I was a child, growing up in Vancouver, one of our annual traditions was to take the bus downtown and marvel at the display windows at the Hudson Bay Company store.
There were always some animatronics with elves making toys or reindeer prancing on roofs.
And then we would go upstairs in the store to the restaurant where we would have a Christmas breakfast with Santa Claus.
As I remember, it wasn’t the fanciest of meals — pancakes and sausages or scrambled eggs — but that wasn’t the point.
The excitement in the room came from waiting for the arrival of the jolly old elf himself.
When Santa arrived, he would sit in a big chair and every child would get a present.
They weren’t expensive items but it didn’t really matter. Meeting Santa was the exciting part.
With what’s happening to the Hudson Bay Company, this sort of event won’t happen anymore.
Indeed, with the demise of the department store (Sears, HBC, Woodwards, Kresge’s, etc.), we are seeing a major shift in shopping but also the role these companies played in the social fabric of communities.I must admit I rarely shopped at the Hudson Bay Company store in Prince George.
I used to shop at Sears on a more frequent basis but that store disappeared years ago. However, I also don’t shop online and this seems to be the replacement for department stores in our modern economy.
I don’t know how many times I have tried to find an item and someone has told me “Well, just go online and order it.”
After all, it will be delivered in one or two days. How much more convenient can you get than that?
At the same time, something like 97 per cent of businesses in Canada are small businesses with less than 10 employees and usually a local owner. But these businesses are going under. Northern Hardware and a host of other downtown staples are no longer to be found.
The latest move — shutting down The Bay — will leave a Prince George shopping centre without a major anchor tenant.
It will further impact the downtown shopping district and Parkwood Place.
Although news stories have said The Donald’s tariffs are to blame, I would suggest they are only the last and final straw.
A company doesn’t get a billion in debt and have so many outstanding creditors in the space of two months. But yes, tariffs were probably the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Really, we are being hit by multiple waves of change — COVID, online shopping, online services, inflation and now a kick in the pants from down south.
In Prince George, this is on top of a forest industry running low on fibre and with a stagnant population.
It is not all gloom and doom. There are still some thriving businesses. There is still strong economic activity. And judging by the number of houses that I see getting built, there is optimism for the future.
But the loss of one of Canada’s trademark institutions is certainly a chilling sight.
Todd Whitcombe is a chemistry professor at UNBC.
