Two rival stores, one street, one very old grudge
Eaton's & Simpson's
For most of the 20th century, two department stores facing each other across Queen Street defined downtown Toronto shopping — one of them started the world's oldest Santa Claus parade in 1905, the other outlasted it by exactly zero years.
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Our shopping malls guide covers the building that replaced Eaton's flagship store. This page is about the store itself, and the decades-long rivalry across Queen Street that shaped downtown Toronto retail before either mall existed.
Timothy Eaton's 1869 store
Irish immigrant Timothy Eaton opened his first Toronto store in 1869, built on a genuinely radical idea for the time: fixed cash prices instead of the haggling, credit and barter that dominated 19th-century retail. It worked well enough that Eaton's grew into a national chain with a presence in every province at its peak.
The Queen Street rivalry
Robert Simpson's competing department store sat directly across Queen Street West from Eaton's, and the pedestrian crossing between them became, for decades, one of the busiest in the country as shoppers comparison-shopped between the two. The rivalry got personal: Eaton kept the lease on an old, unused property specifically to block Simpson's expansion plans for over a decade, and the phrase "Simpson's never tells Eaton's their business" became a genuine internal company culture on both sides — employees were actively discouraged from discussing operations with anyone connected to the rival store.
The world's oldest Santa Claus Parade
Eaton's launched what became the Toronto Santa Claus Parade on December 2, 1905, with Santa arriving at old Union Station and travelling by horse-drawn delivery truck to the downtown Eaton's store. It's now recognized as the oldest continuously running Santa Claus parade in the world.
The end (1999)
Eaton's couldn't survive changing retail patterns and mounting debt: after seeking bankruptcy protection in 1997, the company formally collapsed in August 1999, owing more than $300 million. Sears Canada absorbed the remaining stores. Simpson's had already been sold to the Hudson's Bay Company back in 1978, ending both halves of the rivalry within about two decades of each other.
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Sources
- The Canadian Encyclopedia — Eaton's
- The Canadian Encyclopedia — Eaton's Goes Bankrupt
- Ontario Heritage Trust — The Santa Claus Parade