By Cheryl Jahn

Local icon disappearing

Mar 18, 2025 | 2:38 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – It has been a landmark in Prince George for years. The Hudson’s Bay Company. There was a time when there was a push by then-Mayor John Backhouse to work with Cadillac Fairview to create a mall at that location. It didn’t happen easily, but now that anchor is about to disappear.

“The Hudson’s Bay Company was given a patent 350 years ago to open up Canada through trade, the fur trade,” notes Dr. Ron Camp II, Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at UNBC. “So then it expands and becomes a clothing store of major significance of Canada. It’s an icon for Canadian identity in a lot of ways.”

If its proposal is approved by the court without any changes, it will be able to start selling its inventory, furniture and equipment from all 96 stores in Canada to help pay back creditors. The sale needs to be completed by June 15. And it creates a void.

“For higher-end clothes, there aren’t many stores in Prince George that are operating that way, but I’m a little unusual and always wearing a jacket anyway. So is the market and were they adjusting enough going to more casual or fast fashion, which is more of what business people are wearing in this part of the country anyway?”

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But Prince George was once home to the likes of Sears and Zellers, two more big box department stores. There were options.

“Just another sad chapter in the end of a long history of department stores,” says Neil Godbout, Executive Director of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce. ” And, unfortunately, it seems with the changes that have happened in retail, we have Amazon, we have Walmart and we have big box stores. And so with that, it’s been a slow, gradual decline for department stores.”

Camp says there is an opportunity with the pending closure of the anchor store.

“You look around the university, there’s a lot of really bright people here, starting with students who can go out and can create business opportunities with the ideas they are generating in their classes and in their extracurricular activities. I think that this is a loss, but we could turn the loss into a call for action,” explains Camp.