Shoppers have rushed to buy Hudson’s Bay point blankets after the company announced all its stores will close unless there’s a last-minute rescue.
Most of the shoppers looking to score one of the blankets with its instantly recognizable stripes of green, red, yellow and blue at Victoria’s Bay Centre were out of luck on Saturday.
There were some point blankets out on display in the morning, just around the corner from an escalator that had been shut down for maintenance on the first floor of the sprawling five-storey Hudson’s Bay store at 1150 Douglas St.
But they were quickly snapped up, said a store employee.
Just a handful of the grey-and-white sterling wool point blankets were left.
The Hudson’s Bay Company point blanket, which has been produced since 1779, is a complicated part of Canada’s history.
An ad in 1956 billed the blanket as a “proud, lifetime possession and authentic link with Canada’s pioneer days.”
Hudson’s Bay acknowledges that there’s more to the story. A product description on the company’s website today notes that the blanket has been called “an essential trade item, an enduring emblem of Canada, a carrier of disease, and a symbol of colonialism.”
Point blankets were used by European settlers and explorers to barter for furs with Indigenous peoples in today’s Canada as early as 1750.
The points on a blanket, indicated by short black lines, denoted its size. During the peak of the fur trade, one point was equal in value to one beaver pelt.
The company’s blankets were also exchanged in lopsided land deals between settlers and Indigenous people.
James Douglas, the chief factor for Hudson’s Bay in Victoria and governor of Vancouver Island, exchanged about £100 worth of Hudson’s Bay blankets to secure land in the Saanich Peninsula from the W瘫SÁNE膯 people in the 1852 North Saanich and South Saanich Treaties — an act that remains disputed to this day.
It was only last month that the Canadian and 小蓝视频 governments acknowledged that there were different perspectives and two versions of the treaty — one oral and one written — and that the W瘫SÁNE膯 Nation’s perspective had been ignored in the treaties.
Tsartlip First Nation elected Chief Don Tom, whose nation is among the two W瘫SÁNE膯 nations recognized by government as successor nations to 1852 treaties, said in a statement then that the recognition was long overdue.
Hudson’s Bay has used some 28 labels since 1890, a practice that began so that it could differentiate its England-made wool blankets from those of its competitors.
Since 2022, all sales proceeds of the Multistripe Point Blanket have been directed to the Oshki Wupoowane fund to support Indigneous cultural, artistic and educational endeavours.
On Saturday, there were noticeably more customers than usual in the Bay Centre store. One employee was overheard joking to another: “I don’t like it when it’s this busy.”
According to the Hudson’s Bay website, the last Multi-stripe Point Blanket available on Vancouver Island was a $440 king-size version that could be picked up at the Mayfair mall location. It was listed as unavailable at 3:41 p.m. on Saturday.
All versions of the blanket were listed as out of stock on the department store’s website by late Saturday afternoon.
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