Toronto Star

Please! Give The Bay some privacy. It's changing. Canada's oldest corporation isn't normally one to turn heads these days – at least, not since we lost it to a billionaire from South Carolina two years ago. Yet at downtown locations around the country, Hudson's Bay Company stores are inspiring double-takes. As many Richmond St. pedestrians already know, the south face of Toronto's Bay store at Yonge and Queen Sts. has been transformed into a two-dimensional mirage. It has been draped in a gigantic printed sheet, which looks a lot like The Bay's largely 19th and early 20th century façade – though it occasionally flaps in the breeze. The stores in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are undergoing maquillage – some renovations, some maintenance – and they have slipped into a cocoon that allows them to primp in private, without all and sundry seeing them in a state of undress.