Five Random Stories About The Bay

The Hudson's Bay Company, Canada's longest-running business (and in fact, the oldest company in North America that is still around) announced this week that is undergoing creditor protection. While the potential decline of any retail store is hardly a shock in the year 2025, it's sad nonetheless.

With roots that go back to the year 1670, when it was known as a trader of beaver pelts (and no, wiseass, I am not old enough to have been a patron of the store back then!), "The Bay" has had some sort of impact on most Canadians. I thought this would be as opportune a time as any to look back at some fond (and not-so-fond) memories of the ubiquitous department store chain.

A New Hope (for getting toys)

It was late-1977, and I was at the Yorkdale Shopping Mall in Toronto with my Dad. We had recently seen the greatest story ever told (a/k/a Star Wars) at the box office, and I was thoroughly obsessed with the film.

During our trip to The Bay, I was told by my Dad I could pick out a Kenner Star Wars action figure! To this day, I distinctly remember having a temper tantrum in the store aisles because I couldn't decide which toy to purchase; I want to say it was between Obi-Wan Kenobi and a Stormtrooper.

Obviously, this only happened because I was four years old (these days, I'd probably wait until I got home before I had said temper tantrum), but the fact that I'm happily clutching Obi-Wan in the very fuzzy, bell-bottomed jeans-wearing photo below, suggests that may have been the figure that I picked up that day.

Of course, if I were really smart about the whole thing, I would have kept the figures in their original packaging and been independently wealthy today.

Breakfast with Santa

My grandparents loved to take my siblings and I out for little excursions around town, and I distinctly remember one event that took place at The Bay.

The "Breakfast With Santa" was held on a Saturday or Sunday morning and was held at The Bay's fancy-schmancy restaurant in downtown Toronto. Some preliminary research suggests the restaurant was called Arcadian Court (although that same research suggests that the restaurant was actually part of a different department store known as Simpson's... so let's just say I don't remember what the restaurant was called, for the continuity of this story).

Anyways, my brother and I weren't used to meeting Santa (for breakfast or otherwise; given we're Jewish), so this event was definitely a treat. I remember hating the actual breakfast portion of it, but Old Saint Nick doled out out chocolates and toys at the end... so, the day was a net positive.

It's funny; my grandmother has been gone for almost two years now, and I can still hear her telling people the story of how "Sean wouldn't eat anything!" at that damn Santa breakfast.

Pointless Interview

Fast forward to 1994 or so, and I was a rookie reporter working as an intern at the local newspaper. As I've mentioned before, I wish I would have done more to make that internship more fruitful, as community news was my first love back then. Instead, I sat around the newsroom waiting for editors to send me on assignments, instead of doing actual "reporter things" like cultivating sources and such.

As a result, I was assigned lots of "non-reporter things," such as some sort of meaningless customer event at the neighborhood Bay department store. Quite honestly, I don't remember what the event was, but given the store was something like 200 feet away from the newsroom, I agreed to cover it.

A phone call was made and soon I agreed to meet the store's manager for what promised to be a pointless and unnecessary interview. Headlines such as "Store Manager Reveals Commitment to Customers" don't often end on page one.

What was more frustrating, though, was that I ended up waiting a good 45 minutes for the manager to surface, at which point she asked whether we could do the interview at another time. I politely agreed, slowly walked the four minutes it would take to get back to my desk, and returned the next day. Then, another 45 minutes of waiting for her, followed by the manager telling me what I had to put in the article (for those who don't work in journalism... it simply doesn't work that way).

Was this the most frustrating experience I ever had with an interview? Definitely not (read through some of the Storytelling by Sean archives for examples of those). But for the effort spent proportionate to the end result... it ranks right up there.

Date Night Shirt

It was Friday, September 2, 2011 (you'll see later on why I remember the exact date) and I was about to go out a blind date. About an hour before the evening began, I was reconsidering my choice in clothing. The jeans I was wearing seemed okay, but my shirt was just... not cutting it.

I decided to pop into The Bay (oddly enough, the same location as the previous story) and see if they had a shirt that (a) looked better than the one I was wearing, and (b) was relatively inexpensive. Ten relatively painless minutes later, I found what I was looking for and went out on the date.

Granted, that's not the world's most exciting story. However, it ended up being the first date of the woman I would eventually marry, so that impromptu shopping trip must have paid off!

Family Photo Day

Like many other department stores, The Bay has always had some sort of photography studio as part of its operation. In fact, some of my son's earliest photo shoots were taken at a Bay location. But in this one instance last summer, The Bay didn't charge us a penny for services rendered.

I've written about the taking of this picture before -- it was the most recent time that my parents were with all three of their kids, their spouses and their children. And obviously, an event that monumental requires an epic photo!

But instead of paying some photo studio employee, we just gathered in The Bay's furniture section and asked a friendly passerby to take it for us.

So there you have it; five stories spread over fifty-ish years in the life of a 355 year-old department store. Let's hope that The Bay is able to exit creditor protection and provide more memories for generations to come.

If you enjoyed reading this edition of?Storytelling by Sean, please encourage your friends and colleagues to subscribe. If you have any feedback, please connect with me via LinkedIn, TikTok or at [email protected].