Ninety-nine years ago, Christmastime shoppers lingered before the displays of the Eaton’s store in downtown Toronto. “On a pre-Christmas afternoon – the purple twilight shattered with shafts of rosy light gleaming from a thousand meteor-lights illuminating the shopping district of the city – men and women, boys and girls loitered in the glare, finding appeal in the magnificence of the Yuletide exhibit,” as a Globe article put it.

The Globe, as it was then known, captured that scene in December, 1926, as shoppers admired pearls, pumps, shawls and “a Yuletide table agleam with silver and cut glass.” Such scenes lit up Canada’s big cities for more than a century – thanks to the department stores that for generations both dominated the country’s retail scene and served as the centres of their downtowns. Eaton’s, Simpsons and the Hudson’s Bay Company were goliaths; at one point in the early 20th century, the three companies brought in 14 per cent of the nation’s retail sales.

Those days are gone. The last of those three, Hudson’s Bay, went out of business this year. After filing for creditor protection in March, the Bay was forced to liquidate all its stores, laying off thousands. This was the death of an institution once central to Canadian life — one that helped shape not just shopping habits but collective rituals and the rhythm of our cities.

The shells of Hudson’s Bay stores now sit empty in central Toronto, on Granville Street in Vancouver and on Rue Sainte-Catherine in Montreal, waiting for a new life. What will reinvigorate them? This is a question not only for retailers and landlords but for city planners and citizens alike. Department stores were urban institutions, and today’s central cities need something to replace........

© The Globe and Mail