It’s late spring 2025, and one news headline reads, “Hudson’s Bay officially closes after 355 years in business.” (With today’s borders, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was a Canadian-American company.) What began as a fur trading company and developed into a high-end department store met its end in June 2025.
HBC’s beginning and end is a controversial one that has colonialism, mistreatment and wide expansion baked into it.
Beginnings
Indigenous communities had an existing relationship with the animals around them. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, Indigenous communities used the animals to provide themselves with “food, clothing and shelter.” For years they practiced fur trapping. This was a process of building traps for animals, like beavers, and using the animals’ fur to make goods such as clothes. They had a sustainable fur trade as they didn’t hunt excessively, and they used every part of the animal.
In places like Newfoundland, European fishermen were building relationships with the Indigenous people while their fish dried out. Indigenous people would trade fur and meat to receive items like metal and cloth from the Europeans.
Fur was important in Europe in the 1600s. Well-dressed men wore hats made of beaver felt. This trend caused Europe to run low on beavers. European men began to look to the Americas (Turtle Island) for a new supply of the animal. As fur traders and explorers, the French brothers-in-law, Médard Chouart des Groseilliers and Pierre-Esprit Radisson, were convinced by the stories that some Indigenous people told them about a frozen sea. When they went back to France to gain support to find that area, they were jailed. After their release, they went to England and received support from Prince Rupert and his cousin King Charles II. The royals gave them one ship each to explore the area in 1668. Des Groseilliers made it to James Bay (Radisson’s ship got damaged and he had to return to England). He traded with the Cree and returned to England with an abundance of fur.
King Charles II saw the success of this trip and signed a royal charter that established “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson’s Bay” (Hudson’s Bay Company) in May 1670. (Hudson’s Bay is named after Henry Hudson; its Cree name, Winipekw, means muddy water.) This royal charter meant one big thing: Indigenous land was now property of a foreign entity with no consultation.
The company took parts of modern-day Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and small parts of the U.S. King Charles II disregarded Indigenous people by outlining in the charter that he wouldn’t take land that other Europeans (British or Christian) have claimed. He went further by naming it Rupert’s Land after his cousin; Prince Rupert became the first governor of the company.
Trading
Posts were set up for the English and Scottish to trade with Indigenous peoples. The Indigenous traders would bring the beaver fur their community had trapped “during the fall and winter when beaver pelts were of the highest quality.” They exchanged it for the Englishmen’s “metal tools, guns, textiles and foodstuffs.” As the trade continued, the British introduced the currency Made Beaver. This helped to standardize trade for all posts.
This trading would not have worked without the Indigenous community. This was evidenced by the dwindled profits that traders saw after smallpox and tuberculosis had been introduced to Indigenous groups. The impact was devastating. The traders sought to vaccinate Indigenous people so that they wouldn’t die out—not out of love for them but to make sure their trade wouldn’t die. (Read more about point blankets and their possible connection to smallpox.)
The Métis are sometimes thought of as children of the fur trade. In order to trade with some Indigenous groups, Europeans had to follow their kinship practices (like marriage). Métis people became trappers and hunters. (Read more about how this played out for some people.
There were two other fur trading companies outside of HBC: North West Company (NWC) and the American Fur Company. Métis people benefitted from the competition between HBC as they could sell to whichever company paid the most. This changed in 1821 when HBC merged with NWC. HBC now had a monopoly on the fur trade and could offer lower pay to trappers.
HBC, refreshed
Now that HBC and NWC were one, the company decided to restructure. They had meetings, managed who was employed and closed unprofitable posts (much like companies do now). In 1843, HBC decided it would use Vancouver Island as an agriculture settlement—again without Indigenous consultation. The fur trade relied on Europeans needing fur in high demand, but this was changing as they became more interested in silk.
Expansionists felt like HBC was trying to stop them from going West (to modern day British Columbia). In 1863, the company’s new shareholders were more interested in retail and expansion. This was around the time modern-day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec confederated (1867). The British wanted to keep Rupert’s Land from going to the Americans, so they worked out a deal with John A. Macdonald. For Indigenous groups, history was repeating itself because it was like the HBC takeover that happened under King Charles II.
Expansion
HBC got into retail in 1894, even getting control of a property company between 1973-90. As more settlers came to Canada, the trading posts began diversifying. The trade HBC did with settlers was different to what they did with Indigenous people, and they had different accounts for both groups. By the early 1910s, they had three different departments: “lands sales, fur trade and retail.”
HBC also got into oil and gas and the oil and gas company operated from 1926 to 1982. The company also began expanding to other areas of Canada. In 1965, HBC rebranded as The Bay. In 1970, Queen Elizabeth transferred the company from the U.K. to Canada.
This time also saw HBC expanding into retail stores. The first of six opened in Calgary in 1913. They began acquiring more companies like Zellers (which closed in 2013 and revived in 2023) in the 1970s; this continued well into the 1990s. In 1991, The Bay stopped selling fur as people opposed the fur trade, but it reversed this decision in 1997.
As the early 2000s saw a boom in online shopping, The Bay adapted and created a website. The 2000s also saw The Bay’s ownership change to American hands. In 2006, it was bought by New York businessman Jerry Zucker. From there, it was bought by a private equity company in 2008. It began to transform into the mid- to high-end department store it was known as in recent years. It acquired Saks, Inc (owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and the Saks OFF 5TH) in 2013 and operated them in Canada. It also bought, then sold, a European company.
By 2025, The Bay filed for creditor protection. The company said it was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and “uncertainty between Canada and the United States.” An Ontario court allowed the company to start liquidating its assets. Canadian Tire successfully won a bid to gain ownership of The Bay’s intellectual property. On June 3rd, 2025, an Ontario judge approved the purchase. The Bay closed down all of its stores and the Saks stores it operated.
After being around for 355 years and serving as an integral part of the development of Canada, Hudson’s Bay Company is gone. It’s easy for HBC’s colonial history to get lost in the modern age, but it is important to address it. Indigenous people weren’t able to benefit from the company being on their land the way colonial powers did. The company may be remembered for being a luxury store, but let’s not forget the harm it brought to early and present day Indigenous communities.