Heritage Snapshot #2: Farewell Hudson's Bay

A break in our cultural timeline

Hudson’s Bay Stores 1912 Photo: The Exploration Place

Welcome to NORTHERN HERITAGE Snapshot #2! a series a short, quick dives into heritage topics in Prince George and the North.

The local and national press is full of news about the imminent liquidation of the Hudson’s Bay empire of almost one hundred stores across Canada. This is the second time that Hudson’s Bay Company will have closed for business in Prince George — they closed Fort George fur trading post 110 years ago, after almost a century of trading at the confluence of the Fraser and Nechako.

Archival photos of the post show two log buildings once located in what is now Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.

Hudson’s Bay Company Post at Fort George 1910 (Photo: Northern BC Archives UNBC)

The BX Steamer at South Fort George with the Hudson’s Bay and Lheidli T’enneh village in the background 1910 (Photo: Wikipedia)

The trading post was shut after the railway arrived in 1914 and river-based fur trade and transport became less relevant to life in Prince George. Now it seems that the contemporary Hudson’s Bay model of a progressively more up-market department store is again out of touch with what the city needs.

I’ve heard so many long time residents express regret that a Canadian icon is disappearing after more than 350 years as a founding and driving cultural force. What I think of as a break in our cultural timeline.

So many people have so many memories attached to the store in its earlier downtown location — I can understand, as my family shared the same attachment to “the Bay” in downtown Vancouver. It’s a perfect example of the relationship between what we call “heritage” and what we think of as “collective memory”.

Memory is an individual act; individuals remember in what is a personal, private and often spontaneous activity. Once individual memories are articulated and thus shared, they enter the realm of social or collective rememberings. (Lowenthal The Past is a Foreign Country 1985)

On the Exploration Place website for 100+Prince George Icons there’s a photo of the Prince George Citizen building, taken in the 1920s. The Citizen was established in 1916 and “after the Hudson’s Bay Company, it is the second longest continuously run business in Prince George.” Well, it can now claim to be the longest — no doubt because news never ceases to be relevant to our daily lives and the paper not only makes but also archives and protects the community’s collective memories — and therefore, its heritage.