Eaton's

Eaton's was once Canada's largest department store retailer. Founded in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an Irish immigrant, in 1869, Eaton's first advertisement read "We propose to sell our goods for CASH ONLY – In selling goods, to have only one price." In an era where haggling for goods was commonplace, this was a revolutionary business practice.

Eaton?s in Quebec

Long before Eaton?s established its first Quebec store, it reached out to its francophone customers in Quebec and other parts of Canada at a time when it was uncommon for large anglophone businesses to do so.

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In 1899, francophone catalogue customers were publicly invited to contact Eaton?s in French, although a number of them had been doing so for years. In 1927, Eaton?s published its first all-French catalogue. In the Montreal store, sales staff were predominantly bilingual, with advertising, posters and signs appearing in both English and French.

Related Topics:
1899 - 1927

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Nonetheless, by the early 1960s, Eaton?s was seen by many in the emerging Quebec nationalist movement as a symbol of English Canadian hegemony. It was, for instance, at Eaton's stores that some francophone Quebeckers were reportedly told to "speak white," in turn inspiring another famous work of Quebec literature, Michèle Lalonde's poem Speak White. As a consequence, Eaton's stores in Quebec dropped the English possessive in the chain's name, becoming simply Eaton. A few years later it undertook a major effort to woo French language Quebeckers, by increasing the number of francophone staff and spending millions on marketing efforts in the French-language media. A similar effort was made by The Bay (la Baie), the other formerly "Anglo" chain in Quebec. As a result, Eaton and the Bay grew and grew again in Quebec all through the late 1960s and 1970s by taking a large part of the customer base which had formerly gone to "French-only" department stores such as Sauvé and Dupuis, which eventually closed down.

Related Topics:
Nationalist - Hegemony - The Bay

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