That’s the thing, the PE firm already sold the major assets (the real estate) to themselves and leased it back to HBC. It’s their standard playbook.

HBC has a dark history but in modern form, it could have also provided important competition to Amazon. Apologies are in order nonetheless.

Aside: it’s amazing how HBC, Sears, etc. had successful mail-order/catalog businesses before Amazon came along and built a mail-order system on the internet - and completely threw away their lead.

The PE firm should be required to liquidate assets in order to pay the severance owed to the employees. It is a moral failure of the government and society to allow them to get away without paying.

Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity the same greed it was born from

As an indigenous person who grew up under the shadow of this company. As a boy, I saw my trapper father trade his last furs with the company just before the fur trade industry collapsed in the late 70s. Even as a boy I saw how much work my parents put into processing a dozen furs in exchange for not much money. And this had happened to my family for generations!!!

HBC was made possible by directly exploiting indigenous people for 300 years. They basically owned the land where my family lived. Which meant they could do business in whatever way they wanted with my ancestors. They bought furs for the cheapest prices that could barely sustain the lives of the people they paid. Then resold the furs for enormous profit in Europe. They did that for almost 200 years without any regulation or control which meant it built them one of the biggest corporations in the world … all In the backs of indigenous people who had nothing much to live on.

Fuck the HBC … it’s a beautiful thing to see that terrible name taken down and destroyed.

Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity the same greed it was born from

As an indigenous person who grew up under the shadow of this company. As a boy, I saw my trapper father trade his last furs with the company just before the fur trade industry collapsed in the late 70s. Even as a boy I saw how much work my parents put into processing a dozen furs in exchange for not much money. And this had happened to my family for generations!!!

HBC was made possible by directly exploiting indigenous people for 300 years. They basically owned the land where my family lived. Which meant they could do business in whatever way they wanted with my ancestors. They bought furs for the cheapest prices that could barely sustain the lives of the people they paid. Then resold the furs for enormous profit in Europe. They did that for almost 200 years without any regulation or control which meant it built them one of the biggest corporations in the world … all In the backs of indigenous people who had nothing much to live on.

Fuck the HBC … it’s a beautiful thing to see that terrible name taken down and destroyed.

Man, how old are you?

And I’m sorry for what your family went through.

HBC has a dark history but in modern form, it could have also provided important competition to Amazon. Apologies are in order nonetheless.

Aside: it’s amazing how HBC, Sears, etc. had successful mail-order/catalog businesses before Amazon came along and built a mail-order system on the internet - and completely threw away their lead.

The PE firm should be required to liquidate assets in order to pay the severance owed to the employees. It is a moral failure of the government and society to allow them to get away without paying.

50s … I was very young in the late 70s when I saw my dad make his last deliveries to the HBC store in Moosonee in James Bay. But our family keeps several photos of mounds of furs that my parents processed in the 60s and 70s … piles! with a hundred or more furs all processed by hand … this means weeks of a trapper walking and wandering in the wilderness and covering hundreds of miles on foot, snowshoes and dog team … then returning all the animals to be processed (we ate most of the meat by the way because it was a way to feed the family at the same time) … days of skinning animals … I remember our kitchen reeking of fox, beaver, mink and even wolf with racks drying nearby while mom cooked the meat in a stew. I have fond memories of watching dad deflesh furs on stretcher boards he carved by hand, then tearing pieces of cardboard to stretch the insides of the limbs of the fur. I know it sounds disgusting and even inhumane in this day in age but for us back then it was all a normal part of our lives. And then finally delivering everything to the store for a few hundred bucks … for work, time, effort and skill that would have cost thousands!

50s … I was very young in the late 70s when I saw my dad make his last deliveries to the HBC store in Moosonee in James Bay. But our family keeps several photos of mounds of furs that my parents processed in the 60s and 70s … piles! with a hundred or more furs all processed by hand … this means weeks of a trapper walking and wandering in the wilderness and covering hundreds of miles on foot, snowshoes and dog team … then returning all the animals to be processed (we ate most of the meat by the way because it was a way to feed the family at the same time) … days of skinning animals … I remember our kitchen reeking of fox, beaver, mink and even wolf with racks drying nearby while mom cooked the meat in a stew. I have fond memories of watching dad deflesh furs on stretcher boards he carved by hand, then tearing pieces of cardboard to stretch the insides of the limbs of the fur. I know it sounds disgusting and even inhumane in this day in age but for us back then it was all a normal part of our lives. And then finally delivering everything to the store for a few hundred bucks … for work, time, effort and skill that would have cost thousands!

HBC is a dinosaur, and it went the way of dinosaurs. The brand name still has value, and someone may resurrect it, in some form. Who still remembers Simpsons the store before the show?