By Gwyn Devereaux
The final lights went out on more than a department store.
For generations, Hudson’s Bay had been woven into Canadian life. Couples became engaged there. Families gathered for meals, fittings, and familiar traditions. The holidays began in its windows, spilled across its sales floors, and, at Christmas, led children straight into Santa’s lap.
Then, on June 1, 2025, the remaining stores closed their doors to the public.
For those who loved the Bay, it was more than the loss of a retailer.
It broke their hearts.
From trading posts to a place in Canadian life
Founded in 1670, Hudson’s Bay Company grew from its fur-trading origins into a retail institution whose history stretched across 355 years.
Farewell to the Bay: The Closing of Hudson’s Bay Company follows that journey through trading posts, acquisitions, transitions, and the people whose lives became attached to the company’s history.
It is a history with achievements and consequences, pride and pain. The book makes room for the good and the bad, looking beyond a familiar name to the decisions and relationships that shaped its legacy.
To remember the Bay honestly means looking at the whole story.
The people who kept the Bay alive
Behind the displays and familiar counters were people who gave entire careers to the company.
They cared for the buildings. Received shipments. Processed merchandise. Filled the sales floors. Helped customers find what they needed—and sometimes helped them mark a moment they would remember for the rest of their lives.
Their work held the daily life of the Bay together.
They knew its routines, its traditions, and the effort behind the holiday magic. Over the years, coworkers became friends, customers became familiar faces, and a workplace became part of a family’s history.
They were more than employees.
They were keepers of the memories and treasures of the Bay.
A legacy woven in familiar colours
The Hudson’s Bay blanket became one of the company’s most recognizable symbols. Its familiar bars of colour could call the Bay to mind without a storefront or a sign.
In this book, that blanket also becomes a way to think about the people woven into the company’s story.
Every stitch offers an image of connection: the hands that worked, the families those livelihoods supported, and the generations who carried the Bay forward through change.
A blanket can be kept long after a building has emptied.
So can a memory.
When the doors finally closed
The book also examines the financial struggles and corporate decisions that preceded the company’s fall—and the human cost of that ending.
For employees, the closure meant losing more than a place to report to work. For customers, it meant saying goodbye to somewhere that had held pieces of their lives.
A company can appear in financial records as assets, debts, and transactions. Its loss is felt differently by the people who gave it their loyalty, their labour, and their years.
For them, the silence left behind was personal.
For everyone who loved the Bay
Farewell to the Bay is dedicated to the employees of Hudson’s Bay and the customers who loved it.
It follows the history, but it also remembers the people: those who built their careers there, made their traditions there, and believed there would always be another visit.
The doors closed. The lights went out.
But the people who kept the Bay alive still carry its stories.
This book is for them.
COMING SOON