Unless on the hunt for books or music, or visiting a sporting goods emporium, I tend to undertake the act of shopping with the same attitude as a man entering a dentist’s office: that it is a necessity, but so often a painful one.

Even so, I paused for a moment of quiet reflection upon learning that Hudson’s Bay Company has closed for good.

The oldest retail empire on the continent, predating by two centuries the creation of the country itself, had passed.

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The swashbuckling nature of the enterprise – the lonely mapping of the north, along with the establishment of the trading posts that begin knitting the country together – created a narrative that I am willing to go out on a limb and declare the most adventurous of any corporation to ever stride across North America.

With