Washington, DC, December 24, 2025 --  

Hudson's Bay company has finally met its demise after surviving two distinct areas as a corporate giant.

North America-based map aficionados will fondly remember the Hudson's Bay company from their history textbooks. The fur trapping corporation once owned a huge chunk of North America with scattered trading forts across a vast and frigid wilderness. Amazingly, the company survived for 350 years before being liquidated by an Ontario Court this year.

The company's territorial control of the northern frontier of British America lasted for its first 200 years from its founding in 1670. Then it sold its land to the newly founded Dominion of Canada in 1867, shifting focus to retail operations Its widely distributed trading posts evolved into Canada's largest department store chain called "the Bay."

Like many department stores, it fell on hard times starting in the 1990s due to competition from specialty clothing retailers and online shopping led by Amazon. It never recovered from closures during the pandemic. Since then its stores have closed and were sold off one by one. Its last big asset sold by the liquidation court was also its oldest -- the original hand scripted royal charter granting the company its enormous fur trapping territory.¹

Hudson's Bay Company is not alone in its struggles. America's department store giant Macy's has also been closing stores and struggling to stay alive. This year it stopped hosting Santa at its west coast flagship on Union Square in San Francisco.²

America's retail sales are still strong, with holiday sales expected to top $1 trillion in the United States for the first time ever.³ But nearly 20 percent of sales are now online, forcing physical outlets to fight for a share of a shrinking pie.⁴

Sears, was once the world's largest department store behemoth but fell into bankruptcy in 2018. Nearly all stores have closed down. The last major mall to be constructed in the US was the American Dream mall in the meadowlands just outside New York's City. It opened just before the pandemic, was forced to close before managing a reopening in 2021.

While all department stores and enclosed shopping malls may eventually suffer the same fate as the Bay, none can match the Hudson's Bay Company's fascinating history of successfully transformation from a private viceroyalty during the early age of colonialism. That this vestige of Europe's warring colonial powers managed to survive for centuries until 2025, just to die in the face of retail competition, speaks to the cutthroat nature of today's retail market.

For those who pine for the golden age of department stores, the best bet is to enjoy the survivors while they last. Just as the Bay ended its life with its greatest asset being its obscure royal charter, one of Macy's most valuable remaining assets is it's ownership is similarly obscure -- it's control of the annual Thanksgiving Day parade.

Today's children might one day find the Macy's depicted in Miracle on 34th Street as much of a vestige of a bygone era as a fur trapping concession from the 1670.

Notes:

1. Economist, Canada’s first Christmas without the Hudson’s Bay Company, December 21, 2025

2. SF Gate, Santa Union Square, 'Heartbreaking': San Francisco tradition comes to an unexpected halt after 80 years, November 30, 2025

3. National Retail Federation, NRF Expects Holiday Sales to Surpass $1 Trillion for the First Time in 2025, November 6, 2025

4. St. Louis Fed, E-Commerce Retail Sales as a Percent of Total Sales, August 29, 2025