TORONTO — Hudson’s Bay headed into its last weekend of liquidation sales with its Toronto flagship teeming with shoppers looking for one last treasure from the department store.
Even before the Yonge Street location opened Friday, shoppers waited in front of its doors, exchanging hopes for what they’d find inside and strategizing how to beat the competition.
When they made it in, they found large swaths of the store had been emptied out, but plenty of deals still remained.
There were $10 Levi's jeans for men, $5 corsets for women and $15 pajama sets.
There was also a seemingly endless array of furniture and fixtures for sale, including plastic fruit, decorative books, stacks of woven baskets, holiday gift boxes and row upon row of mannequins.
Travette Banfield picked up a bag of discounted inserts that will hold up the boots always falling over in her closet and others to stretch her and her kids’ shoes, but her best find was a $50 mannequin that came in her skin tone and had wooden arms and adjustable fingers.
She wanted to use it to model outfits for social-media videos she makes but was struggling to balance the mannequin in her shopping trolley.
“We’re going home on the TTC like this,” she said, chuckling in the middle of the shoe department.
While she joked that she's "not trying to be a hoarder," she said she had been to the store earlier in the week, after a friend urged her to go see what Hudson’s Bay had left, while they were out for dinner.
“I was in high heels dragging this pot set through the store,” she said, laughing again.
She wasn’t the only one to make repeat visits to the department store known as Canada’s oldest company as it prepares to close all of its locations by Sunday.
Many of the shoppers at the flagship on Friday said they had visited several of the 80 stores the Bay operated or some of the 13 it ran under its Saks banners in recent days.
They said they made multiple trips because they wanted to find savings but also felt it was important to bear witness to the collapse of the 355-year-old company, which filed for creditor protection in March.
"I had a security guard laughing at me because I've been taking photos the whole time I've been here of just, like, empty areas that are normally filled and have been filled my whole life," said Alysha Robinson, who was buying decorative white and gold pumpkins and Easter eggs she will use for displays at her cannabis store.
"It's just strange to see it so desolate."
Two floors up, Ares Hadjis agreed. The hollowed out Bay brought a sense of déjà vu because he worked for rival department store Sears Canada before it shuttered in 2018.
“I’d rather this place were bustling and still good, but I guess it just reflects the changing landscape,” he said while in search of grocery oddities to add to the fake display steaks and cheese he bought at the Bay last week.
"Even I've been getting more things online the last few years, so I guess I've been contributing to this as well."
In court documents, Hudson's Bay placed the blame for its demise on lower downtown store traffic, a tough recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the more recent trade war.
The trio of challenges made it hard to pay mounting bills and eventually led to layoffs, broken escalators and stores that had to close for days on end because their air conditioning systems were in disrepair.
“I could see it coming but I was always hoping that things would turn around because this is an iconic store,” said Ceciel Wells, who worked at the Bay's Bloor Street location in Toronto for 37 years before it closed in 2022.
"I really could see the writing on the wall, nevertheless it's a sad day."
When she visited the Yonge Street flagship on Friday, she was "shocked" to see how "everything is almost gone."
In prior weeks, she had found the Square One store in Mississauga, Ont., teeming with great deals, including heavily-discounted carpets she, her daughter and her friend bought and a $149 Calvin Klein dress she found for $18.
Her Friday shopping trip featured far less merchandise to choose from, yet she still managed to nab some marked down clothing for a loved one.
For Wells, the bargains were a bonus. The real point of the trip was to see the store and her former colleagues, who gathered informally among racks of picked over bathing suits and dresses, one last time.
"It was a wonderful, wonderful place to work," she said, "so I just came here to say goodbye."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 30, 2025.
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
