Hudson’s Bay Co. : 315-Year-Old Retailer Retains Links to Past

Almost two centuries before there was a Canadian nation and more than 100 years before the United States was formed, Hudson’s Bay Co. was doing business at this island hamlet where the Moose River joins James Bay.

The company, believed to be the oldest retail business in the world, provides a rare historical link to the beginnings of American colonization and the opening glory of the British Empire.

When Britain’s King Charles II granted nearly imperial powers to “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay” in 1670, John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” had been in publication just three years, and Christopher Wren was still planning St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Two years later, in 1672, the first Hudson’s Bay Co. agent in Moose Factory traded his initial consignment of tobacco and tea for the furs and skins that brought Europeans to the far reaches of North America and shaped much of the land’s early history.

Now, three centuries and 13 years later, John Stoddart, a 43-year-old native of Newfoundland, is still trading at Moose Factory with the descendants of the Cree Indians who brought in that first load of beaver skins.

And while Stoddart still buys furs and sells tobacco and tea, the major part of the business he and his two dozen employees conduct in the 10,000-square-foot store resembles that of any department store in any city on the continent.

There is a large grocery section with bins of fresh lettuce, tomatoes and fruit, as well as meat, canned goods and nearly every other sort of food.

Other sections have clothes, shoes, hardware, toys and sporting goods. In the basement is a line of furniture, radios, stereos and other appliances that gives the 1,500 residents of Moose Factory access to a modern style of life. The northern Ontario town was named Moose Factory because the original Hudson’s Bay agent was called a factor.

But if the 120 stores in the company’s northern division--extending from the Maritime Provinces to the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories--seem little different from other small department stores, they still maintain some of the character and role that made them unique institutions from their inception.

“We are still a center of society,” said Larry Mulhern, the manager of the Hudson’s Bay store at Moosonee, another 1,500-person Indian community a mile across the Moose River from Moose Factory.

“People still sort of gravitate (to the store) and still sit around,” he explained. “Some of the old-timers still look on us as the representative of society. They keep their savings in our safe and their personal papers.”

Until as recently as the 1950s, the Hudson’s Bay manager in the isolated northern communities provided nearly all social and health services. “We were kings,” Mulhern said. “The law, the doctor, the works.”

Indeed they were. Reuben Ploughman, now retired in Moosonee after 40 years with Hudson’s Bay Co. in the north, tells of “pulling hundreds, maybe thousands of teeth.”

He delivered babies, including his own oldest child, in a career that took him from his native Newfoundland to dozens of posts from James Bay to the Arctic Circle and back to the Moose River.

The 65-year-old Ploughman represents both the changes and the constants of Hudson’s Bay Co. over the last half a century.

Postwar Changes

“For 50 years, there had been no real changes,” he said during an interview. “We carried basic supplies and groceries--tea, flour, coffee, tobacco and lots of lard.

“There were rifles and lots of ammunition, and we had flannel and print cloth, but most of the Indians made their own clothes out of animal skin. Even their tents were made of seal skin.”

The shift toward modern merchandising came when the Canadian and provincial governments moved into the isolated north after World War II, providing health and social services and, most importantly, communications.

“When I went to work in 1939, it would take me two or three months to get from Newfoundland to some of the northern stores on the Hudson Bay,” Ploughman said.

And there were times when he spent two years or more without any contact with the outside. “At one post, the supply boat didn’t arrive for two years. I had two volumes of Shakespeare and the Bible. I got to know them very well.”

This changed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the railroad reached Moosonee and scheduled air service began extensively in the north, enabling the various posts to stock major consumer items and fresh food.

About 25 years ago, Hudson’s Bay executives moved their headquarters to Canada from London and expanded their retail services to Canada’s metropolitan areas, opening huge department stores in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

As this happened, the importance of the northern operation diminished and the role of the post manager as “king” faded to that of of branch manager. He lost much of his autonomy, with most decisions about stock and operations being made by the computer-equipped bosses in Toronto.

The executives also changed the policy of hiring post agents from Britain and its colonies, especially Scotland and Newfoundland, a British possession until 1949.

Decline in Profits

“They figured that since it was now a Canadian company, the employees should be Canadians,” Ploughman said.

There is an irony here. As Hudson’s Bay Co. expanded, buying up other large retail operations and such unrelated businesses as oil companies, its once-profitable position changed, too.

During the past three years, the company lost $390 million Canadian--about $285 million U.S. at current exchange rates--with 1984’s loss alone reaching $107.4 million, or $78.4 million U.S. And while the new Hudson’s Bay Co., with its multilevel super department stores, was drowning in red ink, its by-now-tiny northern division was making a profit--about the only profit registered by the firm.

According to Vice President A. R. Huband, the old posts account for only 5% of overall sales. “But it is a profitable operation,” he said, although he declined to give figures.

Some analysts blame the company’s problems in part on an impersonal management style that pays too much attention to computer projections. If true, it might pay top managers to take a look at the successful operations in Moose Factory and Moosonee.

Both Mulhern and Stoddart know nearly all of their customers by name, and they deal with them personally.