Vancouver — The Hudson's Bay Co. has seen the country through more than 330 years of commerce — from beaver pelts to a denim-and-leather fashion show during Gay Pride Week in Vancouver last month.
The Bay's cream-coloured heritage department store, complete with Corinthian pillars and old-fashioned square windows all the way up its six storeys, has anchored the downtown heart of this city since 1914. The tale is similar in other cities across the land.
In fact, it's hard not to think of the Bay as anything but Canadian.
And for many shoppers, the thought of losing the storied company and its department store chain to the hated Yankee is almost too much to take.
"That would be awful. Terrible," an anguished Wendy Holmes said outside the Bay yesterday. "We hardly have any Canadian institutions left. I feel very, very emotional about it."
Ms. Holmes, fresh from a purchase of "underwear and stockings," has shopped there for more than 30 years.
She said she might well take her business elsewhere if the Canadian department store icon is bought, as is rumoured to be in the works, by U.S. based Target Corp.
Tracy McDowell was even more emphatic. "It would definitely make a difference to me. Absolutely," she declared.
"Hudson's Bay is the oldest company in Canada and buying Canadian is important to me. I think Canada selling anything to the States is a step backward."
The 34-year-old restaurant manager is the kind of shopper Bay executives must drool over. She loves everything about the store, and not just because it is also, according to a local magazine, the best place to buy lingerie in Vancouver.
"All that history. You see the [Hudson's Bay] blankets, those colours, and you think Canada."
That's why the Bay has always been more than just another department store where shoppers dash in and out for cosmetics or the latest sale on garish beach towels.
You won't find replicas of 334-year-old royal charters or pictures of legendary fur traders Radisson and Des Groseilliers on the wall at Wal-Mart. Or tarting up Target, for that matter.
Nor are you likely to find shoppers like the Lucarino family, who find what they like and stick with it.
The Bay's downtown Vancouver store has been the mercantile mecca for Vincent Lucarino, his wife, their kids and their kids' kids since he came to Canada from Italy 51 years ago and began pruning trees for a living.
Now 83, Mr. Lucarino was there again yesterday helping his daughter choose a wedding present for some friends. "It's a beautiful store. They got everything you want. It's our family store."
He can't stand the thought of the Bay losing its Canadian ownership.
"It should be left in Canada," Mr. Lucarino said. "Americans are going to take over everything. We don't want that. This company started many, many years ago in Canada. Why do we have to give it to somebody else? Why?"
At that point, Mr. Lucarino's daughter Marlene popped out of the store. She agreed with her dad about the venerable Bay.
"It's a Canadian store. I like it. Sure it's just a department store, but it's part of Canada," she said. "Would I reconsider shopping here if it was bought by a U.S. company? Definitely."
Shopper sentiment was not quite unanimous.
"I'd rather not see the Bay sold," recent political-science graduate Wendi Postnikoff said. "But I would still shop here. My focus is international. I'd rather focus on starving children in Iraq than the purchase of commercial products."
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