The Winnipeg Jets take to the ice at the Canada Life Centre where a statue of a seated man overlooks the arena’s concourse level.
He has a stylish beard commonly seen in the 19th century and is wearing a suit jacket; while sitting in an ornate chair and in his hand, he is holding a scroll.
One foot extends out ahead of the other and it has been polished clean by tens of thousands of people every year who touch it as they walk by.
About 1,500 kilometres to the southeast in Toronto, an identical statue sits at the Royal Ontario Museum.
The shoe that extends past the other, has also been polished clean.
So, what is going on?
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I’m sharing the story of a man who inspires people to touch his feet and whose last name became synonymous with Canada before its sudden demise…
This is the story of Eaton’s!
Timothy Eaton was born in March 1834 in Ireland to Scottish Protestant parents John Eaton and Margaret Craig.
His feet are the ones rubbed clean by Canadians whenever they see his statue… and for decades, Eaton’s was so much more than a department store it was family.
Need a house? Order it from Eaton’s.
Want to get into the Christmas spirit? Attend their Santa Claus Parade in Toronto.
Need goalie pads? Strap a couple of their catalogues to your legs.
I know that may seem cliché today, especially with grocery chains saying we are all family while charging us five dollars for three apples.
But for decades, there was no department store in Canada more important, or popular, than Eaton’s.
And then it was like Thanos snapped it from existence.
But I’m jumping ahead… let’s get back to Timothy Eaton.
Timothy grew up in Ireland until he turned 20 and that’s when he sailed to Canada to live with family members in southern Ontario.
In his new home, he apprenticed as a shopkeeper, learning tricks of the trade that would help shape Canadian history years later.
His first job was as an apprentice in Glen Williams, Ontario, where he worked at a haberdashery.
Slowly more family joined him from Ireland, and he found that his brothers Robert and James were interested in starting a business.
With their support, he opened a bakery in Kirkton, Ontario in the early-1860s, but it failed after a few months.
Baked goods were not to be his path to fame and riches.
Not that he was looking for that.
At the time, he would likely be content with a store that did well enough to help him, and his wife Margaret, raise their growing family; eventually it would consist of five sons and three daughters.
Despite the first business failure, Eaton tried again.
This time, he opened a dry goods store in St. Mary’s, Ontario and it did well enough that he took money from it, moved to Toronto and in 1869 opened a dry goods and haberdashery business with his wife Margaret.
Their small shop opened at 178 Yonge Street the same location as one of the most famous malls in Canada: The Toronto Eaton Centre.
Toronto has never been an easy market to break into, and back in 1869 Eaton had to find a way to stand out.
That is when he hit upon two revolutionary ideas.
At the time, buying an item at a store typically involved some sort of negotiation and he would have none of that at his.
Think of how irritating things are like on Facebook Marketplace? Timothy Eaton wanted none of that.
The price you saw was the price of the item, no changes, no haggling.
The second idea involved a money back guarantee for all purchases from Eaton’s.
Today, such a thing is commonplace but back in the 1860s it was nothing short of revolutionary.
It gave the consumer the confidence to buy something, knowing that they could return it if they didn’t like it.
With those two ideas, plus good quality products and a great location, his business began to grow.
Today, The Toronto Eaton Centre is 201,320 square metres with 235 stores, two parkades and multiple floors.
But the first Eaton’s store in 1869 was seven metres by 18 metres.
As the saying goes it isn’t the size of the store that matters, it’s how you use it. And Timothy Eaton made the most of it.
The store had two large windows that looked out into the street where he would display the best items in the store to entice people to enter.
When someone walked in, they were greeted by one of four staff on duty, who were ready to help.
And it didn’t take long for the business to prosper.
By 1883, things were going so well that Eaton moved his little store down the road to 190 Yonge Street.
This store was a massive upgrade with three floors of retail space and 35 departments to shop in.
In the bigger store, he installed the largest plate-glass windows in Toronto, and the first electric lights ever installed in a Canadian store.
And once again it paid off because in two years, he revolutionized things once more by installing a telephone in the store.
In 1885 it was the 370th phone in Toronto, which was also its phone number.
A year later he added the first elevator in a retail establishment in Toronto and used it as a way to increase sales.
Only customers who were going to the upper floor could use the elevator.
Anyone going down had to take the stairs.
Along the path to the elevator, he added several displays to encourage impulse buys from patrons.
This was years most other stores placed chocolate bars at the checkout.
As his store grew, Eaton also began to develop a strong rivalry with another Toronto business, which would become legendary. [PAUSE]
The history of Simpson’s department store mirrors that of Eaton’s.
Robert Simpson was born in Scotland in 1834, the same year as Timothy Eaton. Both men also immigrated to Canada at the same time.
They didn’t know each other when they arrived, but their businesses would become forever linked.
In 1858, Simpson opened his first store in Newmarket, Ontario called Simpson and Trent Groceries, Boots, Shoes and Dry Goods.
In 1870, his store burned to the ground and two years later he opened a dry goods store in Toronto.
Like Eaton’s, his store grew and soon, the two became bitter rivals.
For the next decade and a half, Robert Simpson had plans to expand his store, but Timothy Eaton’s old store stood in the way.
Despite not using the original location of the store, Eaton kept the lease until 1884 to delay expansion efforts of his rival.
The same year that Eaton finally let the lease go, he hit upon another idea that would change the fortunes of his company, and Canada, forever.
We are going to deviate a bit from our chronology here.
Today if you want something you can get it delivered.
Want supper?
Need groceries?
Want mini snow plow blades that you attach to your crocs so you can clear the sidewalk as you walk? Seriously, you can buy those. I looked it up… and they can be at your doorstep within hours or days depending on the item but back in 1884, things were very different.
Eaton’s changed that.
They introduced the Eaton’s Catalogue which was first distributed in the autumn of 1884 at the Industrial Exhibition in Toronto, what today we call the Canadian National Exhibition.
As a quick side note, I am hosting a live show at the CNE on Aug. 19 at 1 p.m. at the Enercare Centre in Studio X and would love to see you all in person and will include details in my show notes.
The 32-page catalogue gave Canadians the ability to order anything Eaton’s had available and in it, Timothy Eaton wrote,
“This catalogue is destined to go wherever the Maple Leaf grows, throughout the vast Dominion. We have the facilities for filling mail orders satisfactory, no matter how far the letter has to come, and the goods have to go.”
Initially customers had to go into the Eaton’s store to place their order and make payment, but it wasn’t long before customers had the ability to send both through the mail.
The Eaton’s catalogue landed as Canada’s population increased at an exponential rate as new immigrants arrived daily and rode the new transcontinental railway as they settled across the country.
Whether you lived in Shaunavon, Northwest Territories, Cranbook, British Columbia or Hamilton, Ontario, you could order everything from clothes to farm machinery from the Eaton’s catalogue.
You could even buy a mail-order house which typically cost between $900 and $1,400, although it was extra if you wanted more doors and windows.
Today, that is about $27,000 to $38,000 or less than a downpayment on a home in most of Canada.
Once ordered and paid for, the lumber was shipped by Eaton’s from British Columbia, and typically the millwork was done in Winnipeg.
All that pre-cut wood was then sent to the purchaser by train, or horse and buggy, depending how rural they were.
At that point, it was up to the purchaser to build their home.
Everything was numbered and it was like boss-level IKEA furniture building.
And yes… if you’re wondering…Many of these homes continue to stand today.
The catalogue grew into the 20th century and mail order warehouses were set up in Toronto, Winnipeg and Moncton.
What started as a 35-page booklet in 1884 was a 500-page catalogue by 1920.
In 1934, the Eaton’s Catalogue began to sell NHL-branded sweaters, something that was relatively rare at the time.
Back then, people went to hockey games in suits and dresses, not jerseys of their favourite team.
Toronto Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe even had people walk around the arena to make sure no one was wearing a jersey in the stands.
Marketed mostly to children, this addition to the Eaton’s catalogue created one of the most famous stories in Canadian history.
The Hockey Sweater, written by Roch Carrier in 1979, follows the real-life experience of Carrier as a child in Quebec.
In 1946, he adored the Montreal Canadiens and their star Maurice Richard, and, in the story, his beloved hockey sweater is starting to fall apart so his mother orders a new one from the Eaton’s Catalogue.
But instead of a Canadiens sweater, a Maple Leafs one arrives, and Carrier is forced to wear the jersey of the team he hates.
The story has sold over 300,000 copies since its publication and was turned into a National Film Board short in 1980.
A line from the story was also printed on the Canadian five-dollar bill from 2001 to 2013 stating,
“The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places – the school, the church and the skating rink – but our real life was on the skating rink.”
But what made the Eaton’s Catalogue so popular?
Essentially, it went beyond just being a way to order items because if money was tight, aspiring children dreaming of being NHL goalies could wrap the catalogues around their legs to serve as goalie pads.
New immigrants learned English by reading through the catalogues.
During The Great Depression teachers used them for lessons when textbooks were hard to come by.
Catalogues could patch holes in walls, or to start a fire on a cold morning in the bitter winters.
They had a dual purpose in outhouses as both reading material and toilet paper.
It had 1,000 uses, and the Eaton’s catalogue was just one part of Eaton’s growing empire at the turn of the century.
By the late-1880s, Timothy Eaton had a thriving retail empire.
His Toronto store was always busy, the catalogue was growing in popularity and money was flowing.
The pedestrian crosswalk at Queen Street West near his store was one of the busiest in Canada due to the thousands of shoppers going to his store.
And he never forgot his employees.
Eaton ensured that his store and warehouses had a lot of light, and good airflow.
He instituted a store closing time of 5 p.m. so employees didn’t have to work late.
Every Saturday afternoon in the summer, the store closed early so employees enjoyed time with their family.
While he opposed labour unions, which was common at the time, threats of strikes under his watch were few and far between.
He also put customers first by expanding product lines to appeal to a growing number of consumers.
What started as a dry-goods store in the 1860s by the 1880s it was a place you could buy nearly anything you wanted.
Eaton also made sure that the company was a family business.
His eldest son, Edward, joined the company in 1888 when he was 17, followed by his other son John Craig five years later.
The income from the business allowed Eaton and his family to move to a large home at Spadina Road and Lowther Avenue in Toronto and their summers were spent at a lakefront property in the Muskoka region.
Despite his wealth, Eaton rarely got involved in the social scene beyond attending the Western Church near to his home.
He didn’t play cards, dance, drink or smoke.
The two most important things in his life were his store, and his family.
Eventually, the company became so large that an expansion out west to a little city called Winnipeg was needed.
As the 20th century dawned, Winnipeg was the third largest city in Canada, behind only Montreal and Toronto.
It was also a railroad hub and the perfect place for a western base of operations as population grew in the Prairies.
Timothy Eaton by now was in his late-70s and spending more time with his children and grandchildren.
His son, John Craig, while not the head of the company officially, took on more duties. Edward Eaton, his eldest son, had tragically died in 1900, and John became the heir apparent.
John saw an opportunity to expand westward and upon getting approval from his father he began to plan the opening of the Winnipeg Eaton’s Store.
He acquired an entire city block at Portage Avenue and Donald Street and construction began by clearing 27,000 loads of earth out in the early summer of 1904, and in March 1905, the first bricks were being laid down.
Construction involved 2.7 million kilograms of iron and steel, 1,021 steel beams, 876 cast-iron pillars and 7,000 barrels of cement.
Mere months later, a five-storey building was ready for the public.
The cash register system used 9.7 kilometres of copper tubbing, and 4.83 kilometres of sash cord were used to hang curtains and blinds.
On July 15, 1905, the Eaton family traveled to Winnipeg to officially welcome city patrons to their newest store.
Timothy Eaton pressed a small pearl button on a podium and at the same time, a four-year-old boy opened the doors as the blinds of all 48 show windows suddenly shot up courtesy of employees standing by for a signal.
Three cheers went up as people walked into the largest retail store in Western Canada and Timothy Eaton, said,
“Yesterday, I went over the building thinking I would find you a place where a fault could be found or a suggestion offered. But to my astonishment, I could not find a single thing to suggest.”
25,000 people, or 20 per cent of the entire city, walked through the doors of the Eaton’s store on opening day.
To those who lived in Winnipeg, the building became known as The Big Store, and it grew almost instantly.
On opening day in 1905, there were 750 employees and that increased to 1200 in just a few weeks.
By 1910, three new storeys were built onto the store to accommodate the growing business.
Just nine years later the store had expanded to 21 acres and employed 8,000 people.
On a busy day, one out of every 10 Winnipeg residents visited the store, and 50 cents of every shopping dollar was spent there.
Yet, there were still new things coming from the company because a few months after the Winnipeg store opened, Eaton’s created something that would be its greatest legacy.
On Dec. 4, 1904, Santa Claus took a stroll from Union Station to the Eaton’s flagship store in downtown Toronto.
That simple stroll began The Santa Claus Parade.
A year later the first official Toronto Santa Claus Parade was held with just one float, carrying Santa Claus as he waved to the crowd.
Once again, the route was from Union Station to the Eaton’s store.
Hundreds showed up and when Santa Claus appeared, he was mobbed by children asking him for toys and trying to touch his suit as he did his best to throw candy and other items to the crowd.
The Toronto Star wrote,
“The arrival of Santa Claus was the signal for general acclamation and the struggle which ensued for the bugles and firecrackers caused considerable damage to clothing.”
This simple beginning was the inception of the oldest Santa Claus Parade in the world and one of the largest parade productions in North America.
But tragedy was brewing for Eaton’s.
By 1906, The Toronto Globe theorized that Timothy Eaton was better known to Canadians than the prime minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
His small store had grown into an empire and integral to the lives of Canadian from coast to coast.
Apart from the Hudson’s Bay Company, no other company was more famous.
But for the man who started it all, time was running out.
Despite his advancing age, Timothy Eaton seemed to be the picture of health.
He had a clean-living lifestyle and could be seen driving his automobile through the city daily.
Then, everything changed.
On Jan. 21, 1907, he contracted a cold while on a drive.
At first it seemed to be nothing but before long the symptoms became worse, and he developed acute pneumonia.
Somewhat stable for a few days, at 2 a.m. on Jan. 31, 1907, his condition deteriorated quickly.
With his family at his bedside, Timothy Eaton passed away just a few hours later at 10:20 a.m. at the age of 72.
As soon as his death was announced on new years eve day condolences flooded in from across Canada and the British Empire.
Every branch of his retail empire closed its doors until Feb. 4 to honour the man who founded the company.
An open viewing of Eaton was held at his home, and thousands of people filed through as dignitaries offered their thoughts.
Toronto mayor Emerson Coatsworth said,
“Mr. Eaton was a man of high personal character, possessed of remarkable administrative and executive genius, firm and determined, but kindly and genial manner.”
His funeral procession, one of the largest in Toronto’s history, featured 200 carriages and tens of thousands of mourners followed his hearse to Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
The man who came to Canada with nearly nothing, and went on to strike gold, was worth $5.25 million at the time of his death.
Today, that fortune would amount to $150 million.
Upon his father’s death, John Craig Eaton became the head of the company and quickly began to expand it.
In 1911, the company had 17,500 employees nationwide, and within a few years the flagship Eaton’s store in Toronto had 60 acres of floorspace.
The Santa Claus Parade continued to expand too.
In 1913, Santa Claus’ float was pulled by real reindeers, and throughout the 1910s St. Nick held court at Massey Hall where 5,000 children went to see him.
John Craig Eaton also made efforts to improve workers’ lives by ensuring wages were in line with those paid elsewhere, which limited turnover.
He also created the Eaton Boys and Girls clubs to offer recreational and educational facilities for employees and their families.
Throughout the First World War, he made sure all Eaton’s employees in active service overseas received full salaries.
A total of 3,300 men from the company enlisted and were paid $2 million in wages during the war.
The company also purchased a series of armoured cars for a division of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces.
For his efforts on the home front, he became Sir John Craig Eaton after he was knighted by the King.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that working for Eaton’s was a utopia.
It was after all a business and the priority was making money.
John Craig Eaton resisted unionization heavily and used strike-breakers on several occasions.
In 1919, hundreds of women employed by the store took part in the Winnipeg General Strike as a show of solidarity and many paid for it with their jobs.
As was common back then, and sadly today, women were paid far less than the men at Eaton’s and elsewhere.
With eyes on expanding the mail order business, John Craig Eaton opened centres in Saskatoon, Regina and Moncton during the latter-part of the decade.
With a bit less humility than his father, John Craig Eaton built Ardwold, an enormous 50-room mansion in Toronto from 1909 to 1911.
Unfortunately for John Craig Eaton, he didn’t get to enjoy his mansion for long.
On March 30, 1922, at the age of only 45, he died of influenza, leaving his wife Flora and their five children behind.
In his will, he stipulated that his son, John David Eaton, take over Eaton’s when he was ready.
He was only 13 years old at the time, so John Craig’s cousin Robert Young Eaton was named president until the younger Eaton could take over.
Robert proved to be highly capable as a president, and he was able to expand the company tenfold.
He opened stores in Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Port Arthur, Hamilton and Halifax.
Robert Young Eaton’s leadership lasted until 1942, and during his tenure he navigated the company through one of the most difficult periods in Canadian history, The Great Depression.
While the wealth of the Eaton family grew, the workers they employed suffered as clerks had their two-week annual holidays cut to one, and all but two of their statutory holidays were cancelled.
In 1934, Member of Parliament Harry Stevens chaired the Royal Commission on Price Spreads and Mass Buying and found that Simpson’s and Eaton’s were both price fixing to make profits at the expense of smaller businesses.
Eaton’s pressured manufacturers to sell them low-cost goods and undercut smaller retail competitors which meant they could buy a suit for $13 and then sell it for $16.95, a price so low that no other retailer, except maybe Simpson’s, could match.
The company also began to use more low-cost labour, paying literal pennies for piecework at its factories as employees were paid only for the goods they produced, not an hourly rate.
While a minimum wage existed in the factories, Eatons’ bullied and threatened employees to produce enough goods to earn the minimum wage, thereby limiting how they had to pay to make up the difference.
Many people had no idea any of this was happening.
Eaton’s continued to advertise huge bargains, which was exactly what people needed The Great Depression and prices were often so low that the only place an Eaton’s employee could afford to shop was Eaton’s.
No one dared complain because there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people looking for work who would gladly take a vacated position.
Then, on Dec. 9, 1942, at the age of 33, John David Eaton took over the company his grandfather had started.
He had spent his whole life within it.
When he was 21, he left Cambridge to work in the men’s wear department at Eaton’s.
He became a company director in 1934, then the vice president three years later.
He was described as a shy man who didn’t like publicity, but under his tenure the company reached its zenith.
Perhaps because of the occasional bad press from during The Great Depression, John David Eaton put forward several measures to improve the lives of employees.
Following the example his father set during the First World War, John David Eaton ensured employees who enlisted to fight in the Second World War would have their wages paid while overseas.
In 1948, he introduced contributory medical insurance for employees, and a retirement plan into which he Eaton contributed $50 million of his own money.
It was also under his guidance that the war with Simpson’s took on a whole new dimension.
and the Christmas season would be its battle ground.
Christmas is an important time for all stores because that’s when most people did their shopping.
If you lived in Toronto, you shopped at either Simpson’s or Eaton’s.
To get shoppers into their stores, the two companies tried to one-up each other via Christmas window displays.
By the 1940s, Simpson’s rivalled Eaton’s in size and quantity of goods.
If you watched the TV show Today’s Special in the 1980s, the department store setting was modeled on Simpson’s.
Robert Simpson, the store’s founder, was the first to decorate windows with Christmas displays which featured children’s toys and anything that would entice a child to go inside.
After the Second World War reached a whole different level.
Both Eaton’s and Simpson’s went over the top as they employed carollers to sing outside their stores and help create a Christmasy atmosphere.
Crowds of people gathered to watch the displays outside the Eaton’s and Simpson’s stores that had mechanical displays with figures dancing and prancing that were created using war surplus motors, crafted by Second World War veterans and aircraft technicians that delighted two generations of children.
The Globe and Mail wrote,
“You will see a crowd of children intent on the magic world before them.”
Some families drove hours to see them, and they became so popular that Toronto city officials asked Eaton’s to limit the hours that the public could view their display as crowds on Queen Street slowed down traffic.
Things reached their apex in 1959 when designers Eleanor and Ted Konkle prepared a 12 Days of Christmas display for Eaton’s, which included each item mentioned in the song.
In Toronto, for many, Christmas and Eaton’s were synonymous with each other, especially after Punkinhead was introduced in 1947 during the Santa Claus Parade.
Punkinhead, or the “sad little bear”, was a rubbery toy bear that had a tuft of orange hair on his head.
He was designed by Canadian Charles Thorson, the man who first drew Bugs Bunny but didn’t get the credit.
The little bear was created to promote the sale of stuffed bears and books during Christmas, and Eaton’s even created a song about him and sold recordings of it.
Between 1947 and 1960, six books were released about Punkinhead. He also appeared on everything from bowls and mugs to chairs and toques. Eventually discontinued, the Punkinhead dolls and books are now collector items.
It seemed like John David Eaton was unstoppable as the company reached its highest point by expanding into British Columbia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, and earning the distinction of having a department store in every province.
As Canada moved through the swinging 60s, challenging times were ahead for the retail giant.
In 1969, at the age of 60, John David Eaton stepped down as the head of Eaton’s as one of the wealthiest men in Canada.
He wanted to enjoy his retirement amid growing health problems.
At the time, the Eaton’s Empire was worth $400 million.
Unfortunately, his retirement did not last long.
In 1972, at the age of only 63, he died suddenly of pneumonia, just like his grandfather Timothy Eaton did over six decades earlier.
Robert Butler took over the company. He was the first non-family member to lead the company and by then competition with Simpson’s was getting worse.
Their rival partnered with Sears, which gave them more capital so to appeal to Canadians’ nationalism, Eaton’s rebranded as Eaton’s of Canada, since Sears was American.
Simpsons expanded into the growing suburbs, where they offered ample parking.
Eaton’s, in contrast, remained in the downtown core, where parking was limited.
Consumers were increasingly choosing to remain in the suburbs rather than drive downtown, which started the downward spiral for Eaton’s.
With Robert Butler at the helm, Eaton’s tried to expand with a chain of discount department stores called Horizon in 1972.
The stores were 60,000 square feet each and located close to supermarkets or in malls.
The first location opened in Scarborough in August 1972, which was successful.
Unfortunately, that was the only success for the Horizon chain.
The company hoped Horizons 122-stores would take customers away from Simpson’s-Sears instead it lured Eaton’s customers as a result only 18 stores were ever opened, and the entire Horizon chain closed in January 1979.
The 1970s saw another loss for the company, and this was much worse than the demise of the Horizon experiment.
Earl Osler took over the presidency of Eaton’s from Robert Butler in 1975, and he inherited a sinking ship.
By the mid-1970s, the iconic Eaton’s catalogue was losing money yearly.
Canadians had more access to local stores and relied less on catalogues.
Where in previous decades a purchase could take a day’s journey to the city by train, a person could now shop at a department store within 30 minutes of where they lived.
The writing was on the wall for the catalogue.
On Jan. 14, 1976, Eaton’s announced at a news conference that the 1976 spring-summer catalogue would be the last.
The news hit many in the country like a sack of hammers.
People felt nostalgia and had fond memories of the catalogues and while they may not have used it recently, as the song goes, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
With the end of the catalogue, 9,000 mail-order employees were out of work.
When Earl Osler appeared on As It Happens on CBC radio to talk about the end of the catalogue, the first words out of host Barbara Frum’s said was, “Mr. Osler, how could you?”
He was the scapegoat for the catalogue’s demise. It was a decision made by the Eaton family, since they controlled the company, while he handled other aspects such as public relations.
In the eyes of Canadians though, he was the man who killed the catalogue and in 1977, his time as president ended.
Frederick Stefan Eaton became president in 1977, and he would guide the company into the 1980s.
While the company was failing fast, the last triumphant moment occurred under his leadership.
Toronto Eaton Centre.
But it had a bit of a rocky start.
Plans to build a giant shopping and office complex had been around Eaton’s for a decade by the time Frederick took over as president.
Under the original plan, Eaton’s wanted to demolish Toronto’s Old City Hall and the Church of the Holy Trinity, while closing several small city streets including Albert Street, Louisa Street, Downey’s Lane and Trinity Square.
News of this set off a firestorm from the public.
Eventually those plans were put on hold, and thankfully, the old city hall still stands to this day.
Eaton’s once again put forward plans for the centre in 1971, which preserved the old city hall but still included demolishing the Church of the Holy Trinity.
In response the congregation banded together to saved their church.
With the opposition to the centre’s original location, the company shifted the new store’s location north to Dundas Street, with a reduction in the office space and a shift of the centre frontage to Yonge Street.
The first phase of what was then called The Eaton Centre opened in 1977, just as the fortunes of Eaton’s were about to get much worse.
For 75 years, the Santa Claus Parade had been a centrepiece for Toronto and Eaton’s.
It had grown in popularity over the decades and was even broadcasted nationally on CBC.
Unfortunately, the bank account of Eaton’s was getting tighter, especially after the construction of The Eaton Centre.
In 1982, Eaton’s announced it would end its association with the parade.
The store had been the main force behind the parade, and many Torontonians believed that this would be the end of it.
That is when Paul Godfrey, a local politician and one of the main forces behind the creation of the Toronto Blue Jays, organized the Save Our Parade campaign.
With a group of businessmen and 20 corporate sponsors, the parade was saved as Eaton’s bowed out.
But the annual parade was just one of many problems facing the company.
The economic recession of the 1980s impacted the store as the Hudson’s Bay Company, Sears and Zellers continued to eat into their market share.
Amid their collapsing fortunes, Frederick Eaton left the presidency of the company in 1988 to be succeeded by his son George Eaton.
George was well-known to Canadians for his racing career that began in 1969 when he became the top Canadian at the Can-Am Series and participated in the Canadian Formula A series.
He competed in 13 World Championship Grand Prix but never won or had a podium finish before his retirement from the sport in 1971.
In 1988, he became the head of the company and would become the last of the family to lead Eaton’s.
He may have hoped to lead it into the 21st century, but the company wouldn’t make it that far.
Wal-Mart was making headway into Canada around this same time, minimizing Eaton’s market share even further.
Box stores were becoming more popular, and Eaton’s business model was becoming extinct.
To regain some of its market, Eaton’s shifted to value pricing, which eliminated discounts and sales.
This decision was not greeted warmly by Canadians and the strategy only lasted from 1991 to 1995.
The company that once had 60 per cent of the market share was reduced to 10 per cent by the mid-1990s.
In 1997, the company filed for bankruptcy protection and announced plans to close 31 of its 90 stores, including two-thirds of the stores in Alberta.
The writing was on the wall, and George Eaton resigned.
He was replaced in 1997 by George Kosich, who was the former chief executive of The Bay.
Eaton’s was hoping to duplicate the Bay success, but the rival store filed a lawsuit stating Kosich had violated his contract.
It was not a good decision by Kosich. His leadership failed and he resigned in 1998.
Brent Ballantyne took over, but he was no more use than the captain of the Titanic, watching a once great enterprise sinking beneath the waves.
He took the company public, issuing 11.7 million common shares at $15 each, with the Eaton family holding 51 per cent of the shares.
It didn’t help. By the end of 1998, the company had lost $72 million.
In August 1999, Eaton’s went bankrupt.
At the time, there were 64 department stores, and one warehouse left.
A month later, Sears Canada purchased all the shares of the Timothy Eaton Company, along with eight of its stores with the option to buy five more for $30 million.
On Oct. 17, 1999, every remaining Eaton’s store was closed, and the company was liquidated.
After 130 years, one of the most famous companies in Canadian history, was gone.
That is the story of Eaton’s, but what happened to the famous Winnipeg store?
The Winnipeg store was emptied in 1999 and demolished in 2002 to make way for the MTS Centre.
The red bricks of the original store were used to build the arena façade in honour of the Eaton’s store location.
The statue of Timothy Eaton that had been housed at the store was moved to Polo Park Mall after the demolition.
When The Hudson’s Bay Company opened a store in the mall, they demanded the statue be removed.
The Eaton family refused to move it, and the Manitoba government declared the statue a provincial heritage object.
It was then moved to MTS Place, now known as Canada Life Centre, one floor up from the exact spot where it once stood in the Eaton’s store.
As for Timothy Eaton’s shiny foot?
It is believed to be good luck to rub the left shoe of the statue.
So, if you are at the Canada Life Centre, or the Royal Ontario Museum, give Timothy Eaton’s shoe a rub and maybe you will have better luck than Eaton’s did.
