The Bay is not currently shipping to any Northwest Territories community, and it’s not clear when shipping will resume.
The Bay is the short name for the department store and online retail chain that forms the main outlet for the Hudson’s Bay Company, which spent centuries operating fur trading posts in northern Canada.
One Yellowknife resident who tried to order from The Bay, only to be told the company isn’t shipping to the NWT right now, saw the irony in that.
“It used to trade with people here last century,” the resident wrote. “Then it had a physical store in downtown Yellowknife in the 1980s. Then it closed that store and switched to online sales. Now, they won’t even ship to Yellowknife.”
Tiffany Bourré, a spokesperson for The Bay, said by email that the company was “making updates to our shipping program.”
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“Thus, shipping to NWT is temporarily unavailable,” Bourré wrote, without elaborating on the nature of the updates or whether other destinations were similarly affected.
“However, once updates are complete we expect to resume delivery to the region, later this summer.”
Asked if The Bay had a specific date in mind, Bourré said the company had no “definitive timeline.”
The Bay bills itself as a destination for online clothing, beauty, home and lifestyle shopping. While Yellowknife does have some stores catering to those markets, it’s not uncommon for residents to rely on larger southern chains like The Bay if they can’t find what they want locally, as there are no other options within reasonable driving distance.
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Bourré did not state whether the updates, once completed, would affect shipping times for the NWT.
The Bay had at least three physical stores in Yellowknife according to a city guide. The first store burned down and was replaced by a second store in 1945 that later became a heritage site. The third operated in the city’s downtown for several decades.
The first Hudson’s Bay Company trading post in the present-day NWT, Chiswick House in the Slave River Delta, opened in 1803.
Some families have been connected with the company for four generations, and HBC’s long history with Indigenous people and the fur trade has been described as “the start of the monetary economy for Indigenous people in the North.”
