Iconic Canadian retailer crown passed to North West Co.

Opinion

With the Canadian economy bracing for what could be a structural overhaul in the face of crushing U.S. tariffs, the potential demise of the Hudson’s Bay Co. is a bitter pill for some.

Despite being owned by U.S. investors for some time, the brand employs more than 9,000 people in Canada and holds an esteemed position in the nation’s culture, with its roots running as far back as the 1670s fur trade.

Regardless of whether Hudson’s Bay closes all 80 of its namesake sites (plus 16 Saks-related stores) in the midst of its creditor protection process, the point has been made: the iconic retailer has been struggling mightily for years and does not see an end in sight.

However, while the Bay evolved into a chain of downtown department stores and anchor tenants in suburban malls — becoming largely unrecognizable from many of its competitors — its former chain of northern stores, the North West Company, more authentically became the iconic Canadian retailer.

It operates in communities the bulk of the Canadian population never gets to.

Spun off from HBC in the late 1980s, when the parent company was in need of cash, NWC’s chain of Northern stores — in many of the same communities its progenitor operated in — were profitable then and have remained profitable now.

The owners of what is now a widely-held public company with a market cap of $2.2 billion and more than 7,000 employees run a company that might have been much more recognizable to the voyageurs of the original NWC that merged with HBC in the 1820s than the Bay’s chain of 80 department stores.

And when it comes to a true Canadian enterprise, one that arguably only a Canadian operator would know how to do (and/or would even consider doing), the NWC’s chain of close to 170 modern food and general merchandise retail stores, mostly in remote and Indigenous communities (many not serviced by all-season roads), puts it in a class of its own.

Communities have voiced many complaints about the stores over the years — prices in the North are so much higher than what city dwellers would pay — but the Northern chain remains the only commercial venture willing and able to run such a venture (and can do so profitably).

It’s so profitable and reliable, its dividend-paying stock has risen steadily over the years.

NWC is also headquartered in Winnipeg, with a fully-staffed head office called Gibraltar House — in the very location that used to be called Hudson’s Bay House, across the street from Upper Fort Garry.

The company also operates a sprawling distribution centre near CentrePort on Winnipeg’s northwest edge that is responsible for a logistics operation unlike any in North America.

While the Bay stores competed with larger U.S. brands and struggled to keep up up with retail trends now dominated by online retailers, NWC vice-president of Canadian store operations Michael Beaulieu said it, too, has competition in most of its locations but, it’s safe to say, not to the extent urban retailers face.

When the Hudson’s Bay Northern Stores division was spun off and acquired by management and a number of institutional investors in 1987, it was doing $400 million in revenue on 170 stores.

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In 2023, the NWC’s Canadian operations had about the same number of locations and generated about $1.4 billion in revenue.

(NWC also owns about 40 stores in Alaska, after acquiring the Alaska Commercial Co. in the 1990s, about 20 in the Caribbean and South Pacific called Cost-U-Less, acquired in 2007, and Riteway Food Markets.)

Although the company has been operating as an independent entity from the HBC effectively since Day 1, Beaulieu said: “The HBC legacy lives on through our commitment to serving our remote and Indigenous communities across Canada,” operating in many of the same communities it has for more than 200 years.

The NWC is the largest private-sector employer of Indigenous people in the country. And while there are many in Indigenous communities who are not fans, it has operated diversity, equity and inclusion policies long before anyone even knew what the DEI acronym meant.

“We recognize our intertwined history and we also acknowledge the colonial impact both the HBC and NWC have had on Indigenous people,” Beaulieu said.

Talk about an iconic Canadian retailer.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

Martin Cash
Reporter

Martin Cash is a business reporter/columnist who’s been on that beat for the Free Press since 1989. He’s a graduate of the University of Toronto and studied journalism at Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University). Read more about Martin.

Every piece of reporting Martin produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.