Eatons Department Store.

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exploder321

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Nov 27, 2006
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I ment to ask this yesterday and forgot...Who is eatons department store????

They had a nifty looking washer
 
Eaton's was a department store chain across Canada that ran for a hundred and something years, owned by the Eaton family. It was higher end than Sears and sold everything from designer fashion to farm equipment. EVERYTHING! Went bankrupt in 1999. We all grew up with something in the house from Eatons - the Eatonia brand or Viking, from washers to tv's. I miss that store! McClary was another Canadian appliance brand that merged with Easy - McClary-Easy. Looong gone now...... like most Canadian co's. Inglis etc....
 
Further to the demise of Eatons in Canada. In the final bankruptcy stages they were bought by Sears Canada (in all likelihood to get their primo downtown locations in most major cities) and they (Sears) did make an attempt to keep the flaggiest of the flagship stores under the Eaton banner, fixing them up substantially however it didn't work and they renamed those downtown stores as Sears stores and retired the Eaton name for good.
As a side note. Eatons major appliances in Canada were branded Viking and this meant that the high end Viking appliances sold in the US which were not the same company, could not be sold in Canada using the Viking name so US Viking stoves etc were called Ultraline in Canada. But I see they're now called Viking here now as in the US so Sears Canada must have relinquished the rights to that name in Canada, for a price no doubt. Sears Canada is 51% owned by Sears Roebuck who are now attempting to purchase all the shares of the company but they didn't get enough votes from the remaining share holders to do so. Apparently Sears Canada is a lot more profitable than Sears US but I can't fathom how so, whenever I go there you could shoot a cannon thru the place and not hit anyone even on the richochets.
 
The last time I was in Sears in Quebec (over four years ago) the only busy department was the catalogue pickup, lol!

I DO miss the Sears catalogue, though....
 
Sears still pumps out catalogues galore in Canada. You barely finish reading the big Spring and Summers or Fall and Winters and there's two or more mid season or special ones littering the front porch. The weekly flyers in the paper add to the pricing confusion as well. Mom was irked last week and going to write them. In the F&W catalogue the have many many items with two prices,, the lowest price is if you bought before Nov 15 and the higher price is if you buy it after Nov 15.. Like she said..who in their right mind is going to buy the thing for the higher price after Nov 15 when they can see they could have got it for a huge amount less before that.. I'm not talking a few dolls.. hundreds on big ticket items.. i.e. a treadmill $500 more after Nov 15.. what are they thinking.
 
Back to Canadian appliances for a moment....

Does the Moffat brand still exist?

In the Ontario cottage we rented for the better part of the summer in the mid and late 70s, there was a newer Moffat 24 inch electric stove, and it was pretty nice for an electric. Oven was surprisingly commodious, and thermostat was right on.

Lawrence/Maytagbear
 
I'm pretty sure the Moffat brand is long gone - I think it became GE. My parents had a Moffat stove for years, complete with oil burner on the side and this house came with a harvest gold electric that had seen better days - the oven temp, like you said though, was right on. When I found my '48 Tappan, Moffat went out the door fast!
 
How's about Beaumark?

I actually remember Beaumark vacuums....I think they were rebadged Eureka Rallys!!
 
The old Eaton's in Downtown Vancouver, while being remarkably unattractive from the outside, is hands down the most glamourous and attractive Sears you will ever see on the inside :-) and the range of products is truly impressive.

A close second is the Sears at Southcenter Mall in Seattle. Prior to its current tenent, it was the uber-elegant, and dearly departed, Frederick & Nelson. Sear's just pretty much moved in without changing anything (unlike Nordstrom who pretty much destroyed the original Frederick & Nelson downtown Seattle store in favor of their own distinctively boring style of store.
 
oh yeah, Vancouver's downtown Eatons/Sears has been described as looking like a "giant urinal". Built in the '70's, what a surprise. It's unfortunate - the old Eatons (the shell still remains as SFU's downtown campus)was beautiful. The best one was in Toronto, the College Park store I think - absolute art deco splendor. You just wanted to shop and shop there.
 
The Moffat name is still au courant and found on new white goods, they were part of the amalgamation of GE, MCLary, Moffat and I forget who else. We had a beautiful Moffat SxS double oven from the 50's, with a nice chromy dash, clock, timer etc..gone now

Beaumark is still the Hudson Bay Co's store brand name for white goods so you've got various manufacturers building stuff for them.

So Dan,, that means no more Frango's for Christmas eh?

The Sears downtown store in Calgary was also pretty elegant inside seeing as it was a former Eatons, but not an old one. They spent a lot of money on it and it is nice. Not what you expect for a Sears store at all which you usually think of as being sort of tatty suburban. But even the mall Sears in Canada have been going through dramatic facelifts but I kinda like the old ones.. there was still one in Calgary at Northhill, very late 50's early 60's Sears with the old lights and fixtures and numerous botched cover ups trying to make it look more modern.. LOL
 
Fredericks may be gone...

But Frangos live on. How's this for convulted?

1920's (or thereabouts)
Frangos are developed by Fredericks, which was subsequently sold to Marshall Fields. Chicagoans discover the joy of Frangos as well.

(fast forward 50 years or so)

Marshall Fields sells off Fredericks, partly in an effort to fight off a hostile takeover by Dayton/Hudson, but they let Fredricks keep the right to make and sell Frangos.

1992:
Frederick's goes out of business, but the Seatlle-based Bon Marche (by this time a Federated department store) get the right to keep selling Frangos in the NW.

1990-something?
Marshall Fields gets bought by Target (formerly Dayton/Hudson)

early 2000-something:
Target sells all their non-target department stores to Federated.

2005-ish:
Federated changes everyone's name to Macy's, thus ensuring that EVERYONE EVERYWHERE can now get Frangos - Except at Nordstrom, who is housed in the original Frederick's building, which housed the Frango's factory until 1992 or thereabouts.
 
So what you're saying is you can still get them LOL

All these mergers and manias in the dept store biz is almost as bad as the phone gas and light companies. My poor mother is totally confused as to who she gets her gas from and who comes round to fix the furnace, where once one call did it all, now it's a guessing game.
 
Frangos are a mint chocolate candy - although there are now several different flavores.

The best and highest use of the Frango was in a Frango milk shake, which was sold at the Paul Bunyon Room (later renamed the Arcade Cafe) at Fredericks.

The space that was the Paul Bunyon Room is now the men's room for Nordstrom, which should tell you something about what they did to the store right there.

Anyway, sorry to hijack the thread. Christmas always makes me nostalgic for the old department stores.
 
Thank you! I was very curious... And I'm with you on feeling nostaligic for old department stores at Christmas - I still miss the the Woodwards Christmas windows, there's nothing like that now.
 
Ahhh the old Woodwards store on east Hastings. I loved it as well. Remember that odd cafeteria sort of on a mezzanine and best of all the basement was a full grocery store, now that was different. It's where I bought my avocado KA portable dishwasher, my Electrohome spinet organ and my very first microwave oven (Toshiba), all around 1975. Oh and we got our two color tv's there as well (Transonics). I still have the 12 inch portable and it works as good as new. Why I bought so much there was that they had the 4 equal payments, same as cash policy and I didn't have a credit card back then.
 

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