Former Hudson’s Bay windows turned into eye-candy

TORONTO — One of Toronto’s busiest shopping corridors came alive Sunday with elves that operated conveyor belts laden with Mars bars, celebrated the clock hitting midnight with a blast of Skittles and frolicked and fished in a winter wonderland.

The curios along the Yonge Street side of Hudson’s Bay’s former flagship took over a spot the department store’s sister firm Saks Fifth Avenue usually reserved for mannequins bedecked with chic holiday outfits. They are around the corner from the Queen Street windows HBC festooned for Christmas for as long as people can remember.

This year’s scenes are confectionary company Mars Canada’s way to ensure a time-honoured tradition does not fade away with Hudson’s Bay. The retailer known as Canada’s oldest company collapsed in early-spring and shuttered all of its stores by June, leaving Toronto poised to go without its famed holiday windows.

Mars decided to save the city from that fate after general manager Ellen Thompson’s team wandered past the empty windows on their way to dinner.

“For the next 20 to 30 minutes, all everyone could talk about was how sad they were that the holiday tradition wouldn’t be returning,” she said.

“We started looking things up and seeing that there were so many people on social media that were talking about how much they were going to miss the windows and we thought to ourselves we can do something about this.”

Within the span of a month, Mars had not only taken advantage of landlord Cadillac Fairview’s move to rent out its windows to advertisers like Sinai Health and the Aga Khan Museum but had also procured animatronics, lights and plenty of other creative doodads.

“It was a pretty bold ambition in a very short period of time,” Thompson said.

The final product, which runs until Jan. 2, is dubbed Wonders of Mars. It turns seven windows into scenes depicting a day in the life of the company’s elves.

The first window opens up on the whimsical creatures starting their day amid a rosy sunrise. Bubble gum spheres filled with supplies will bob around elves that appear to slide down ribbons of unspooled Hubba Bubba tape.

Then, the action moves to a Mars factory where chocolate is pumped through pipes and elves work levers to assemble it into bars.

Other scenes see the elves sledding, ice fishing and battling it out in a snowball fight before baking a fresh batch of M&M-packed cookies.

The experience ends with panes inviting viewers to submit their holiday lists. For each submitted, Mars will donate $1 to Food Banks Canada, maxing out at $15,000.

To put the scenes together, Mars had the help of Ana Fernandes, who spent the last two decades as HBC’s creative director of visual presentation and before that, worked at its defunct rival Eaton’s.

She wasn’t around when the company and its former counterparts Simpson’s and Morgan’s launched their holiday windows — which was believed to be in the early 1900s — but is well versed in their lore.

One year, the panes at the corner of Queen and Yonge streets were said to have hosted a live black bear cub. Police interfered when the spectacle caused a traffic jam.

More recently, Mariah Carey was on hand in 2016 to unveil the windows, reportedly being paid $1 million to belt out two tunes.

Fernandes had a hand in all of the windows made over the last 20 years, including HBC’s recent Santa’s factory-themed displays. Flanked by nutcrackers, they showed a computer pushing out a list of letter writers to Santa and twirling robotic arms packaging candy canes.

In other years, her windows transported viewers to the wilderness, where geese danced with wreaths around their necks and bears burrowed in the snow, and to an old-timey village where HBC-striped animatronics carolled, decorated Christmas trees and tended to Santa’s sled and reindeers.

After HBC closed, Fernandes never imagined she’d be designing holiday windows this year, so Mars’ call caught her off guard.

“I was just so excited,” she said. “First things first, I called each child and let them know, ‘Hey, I’m back.’”

Fernandes usually spent a whole year planning the holiday windows. Load-in alone could take a month and before anything was unveiled to the public, it had to sit running behind window coverings for at least a week to ensure the mechanical components could last all season long without malfunctions.

As soon as one year’s display was done, she’d start crafting the next one, but Mars isn’t getting that far ahead of itself.

“Considering we’ve only started thinking about it a month ago, I think we’re focused very much on making sure we can execute the beautiful windows for this year,” Thompson said, when asked if Mars will make the windows a tradition.

“Then, I think, we’ll see from there. A lot can change.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 14, 2025.