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The Bay

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For other uses of this term, see The Bay (disambiguation).
The Bay is a chain of 98 fashion department stores that operate across parts of Canada. "The Bay" is short for the Hudson's Bay Company, of which it is a subsidiary. In Quebec the chain is known as la Baie, short for "Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson", and the chain uses both the English and French versions of the name in some parts of the country outside Quebec.

The stores are full-line department stores, with a focus on apparel, accessories, and home goods. Most price points are mid- to upper-mid; however there is an assortment of everyday low price merchandise. The Bay can be compared to US retailer Macy's, and is more up-market than Sears Canada department stores. The average store is 135,000 square feet. Flagship downtown stores exist in Canada's largest cities, including Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. These stores are larger in size and carry a much broader range of goods than their suburban counterparts. The Bay is a division of the Hudson's Bay Company, Canada's largest department store retailer and oldest corporation.

In 1991, the Bay agreed to stop selling fur after 331 years in response to widespread public sentiment[[1]] opposing killing animals for this purpose. However, in 1997 they reopened their fur salons. Animal rights groups such as Freedom for Animals have been campaigning to get the Bay to once again stop selling fur.

Recent additions to larger (namely flagship stores) of the Bay include the Style Outlet and Pharmamart sections. Style Outlets, off-price departments located in 14 stores, offer designer labels at discounted prices, much like the Winners chain. This department, introduced in 2003, was the launching pad for HBC's newest division, Designer Depot, which launched in the fall of 2004.

Pharmamart is a centre that includes basic grocery and household items and among other amnetities, a pharmacy. This can be interpreted as an attempt to compete directly with Shoppers Drug Mart, Wal-Mart or others, and also as a response to the success of the basic grocery addition in the modern Zellers prototype.

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The Bay Queen Street, located at the southwest corner of Queen Street West and Yonge Street in Downtown Toronto, is Canada's largest department store with 1,000,000 square feet of retail space. The store occupies a full block and is connected by a skyway over Queen Street to the Toronto Eaton Centre.[Toronto Tourism: The Bay Queen Street] Fifty-two of this location's Simpsons employees fought in World War II, and are commemorated in a plaque at the south-east entrance. The location offers three restaurants, the Arcadian Court Restaurant, Great Cooks on Eight, and City View Café.
  • Waterloo, Ontario - Conestoga Mall
  • Willowdale, Ontario - Centerpoint Mall
  • Willowdale, Ontario - Fairview Mall
  • Windsor, Ontario - Devonshire Mall

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