Jane Macdougall and fashion photographer friend John Dennison from her days at working at the Bay in marketing.Jane Macdougall/Supplied
When I worked at the Bay in downtown Vancouver in the 1980s, there was an old piece of lore about a woman who spent her days waiting just inside the doors of the store at the Georgia Street entrance, closest to Granville.
She wore a coat, even in summer. If the store was open, that’s where you’d find her. Her son had gone off to fight in the Second World War and hadn’t come home. She was certain he was alive and that, one day, he’d return. And when he did, he’d do what every Vancouverite did: He’d go shopping at the Hudson’s Bay. And she’d be there, waiting.
As delusions go, it was a defensible one. Simply everyone shopped at the Bay. For simply everything.
Hatch, match, dispatch: Whatever life’s occasions demanded, you could find it at the Bay. Wedding dresses, yarn, books, art supplies, Cabbage Patch Kids and Tamagotchis, records, china, appliances large and small. The list was exhaustive.
In spring, women lugged their fur coats in for seasonal hibernation, filling a vault secreted within the store. Every autumn, the department that outfitted school supplies had a clipboard with each school’s list of necessaries. Breakfast with Santa in the Seymour Buffet was the official launch of the Christmas season.
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There was an interior design studio, a photo studio, shoe repair, key-cutting, gift-wrapping and a post office. The height of high-school cool was to have been on the teen council for one of the junior fashion departments. Fashion shows were routine events; I remember one that included Sophia Loren, Rosita Missoni and Gina Lollobrigida. You could shop till you dropped and never have to lug a single thing: Parcel pickup was a popular service, as was home delivery by a fleet of vans.
My job was not on the selling floor but with the Bay’s in-house advertising agency – the biggest ad agency west of Toronto.
The Bay did so much business that it required its own department devoted to communicating with its customers. We were tucked behind the luggage department but we had it all: fashion illustrators, media buyers, layout artists, a special-events department, our own photo studio – and a broadcast co-ordinator. That was me. I was hired to write fashion copy as well as write and produce ads for radio and TV.
The Bay’s illustrious history wasn’t lost on any of us. I once produced a radio ad that featured Radishes and Gooseberries – if you remember your high-school history, you’ll know I was referring to Radisson and Groseilliers – the instigators of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
About 750 people worked at that Bay. We entered from the underused Seymour Street entrance beneath the parkade bridge. The wide terrazzo stairs were the exclusive domain of employees, as shoppers preferred the bank of elevators or the clunking escalator, a big attraction back in 1927 when the cream-coloured Edwardian-style building with its handsome colonnade of Corinthian columns was constructed.
Early in my career I met a steel magnolia named Dana Hall, a department manager. “I’m gonna run this place one day,” she told me. And that’s what happened.
Ms. Hall would go on to become the general manager of the downtown Vancouver Bay store. She was working Wed., June 15, 2011, the day of the Stanley Cup riots. Realizing the violence was escalating and that it was unsafe for shoppers to leave, she ushered everyone – staff and customers – into the basement.
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Off-duty members of the Bay’s loss-prevention team heard on the news that the store was under assault and, unbidden, made their way to the location. By then, rioters and looters were breaking windows and flooding in.
On the main floor, Ms. Hall and her small cadre of security guards were doing their best to hold back the tide.
It’s almost 15 years later, but Ms. Hall’s eyes well up with tears when she tells me about arriving at work the next morning and seeing local citizens armed with their own brooms and dustpans sweeping up the sidewalk out front.
In appreciation, the Bay hosted a pancake breakfast for those volunteers.
So, that’s my story of the Bay. That beautiful wedding cake of a building, filled with hundreds of people making a living, forging lifelong relationships while provisioning the lives of the surrounding community.
The Bay was part of our everyday lives and our heritage; we all shopped there. Today, I don’t know where a grief-addled mother would wait for her son to return from war, sure in her certainty that when he did return, he’d most certainly shop at the Bay.
Jane Macdougall worked at the Bay in Vancouver in the mid-80s.
Share your memories and thoughts about The Bay
The Hudson’s Bay Co. is literally older than Canada itself, and people from coast to coast have grown up with various versions of the store and its iconic striped merchandise. Do you have a strong memory involving The Bay to share? Perhaps you registered for your wedding or made a meaningful purchase there, worked at a location or simply recall a different time for department stores. We want to hear about it. If you’d like to send us a photo related to your submission, send it to us in an email at audience@globeandmail.com with “Bay memories” in the subject line.
