Places to visit in bay area

Near the old perfume counters on the ground floor of the Hudson’s Bay department store in Winnipeg, Canada, a trade dripping with symbolism took place.

The 39th “governor” of Hudson’s Bay — North America’s oldest company and one of Canada’s most iconic — accepted from an Indigenous leader two beaver pelts and two elk hides in exchange for the building, the company’s onetime Canadian flagship .

The ceremony took place a year ago when Hudson’s Bay, the company once chartered to found the colony that became part of Canada, gave away its shuttered, 600,000-square-foot, six-floor downtown building to a group of First Nations. But what seemed like an act of reconciliation has become a subject of intense debate as the building’s worth and the cost of transforming it have become clearer: Was this a real gift or an empty one?

The gift of the building has focused attention on the evolving relationship between Hudson’s Bay and Indigenous people in Canada, as well as their central role in the history of a country founded on the fur trade between them and the company.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and others who attended the ceremony praised the transfer of the building as an act of reconciliation between Canada and its oppressed Indigenous population. But with the ceremony’s feel-good effects dissipating, the details of the deal are raising questions about economic fairness as Canada works to achieve reconciliation with its Indigenous communities.

The Indigenous owners aim to turn the sprawling structure into a multiuse building for their community that would include restaurants, a rooftop garden and a healing center incorporating Western and traditional medicine.

In 2019, commercial real estate appraisers said the building was worth nothing — or even less, because bringing it up to code alone would cost up to 111 million Canadian dollars ($8 million).

The company declined to comment for this article and provided a general statement that did not address details of the handover.

For generations — at least for customers who were not Indigenous — a visit downtown was incomplete without a stop inside the Bay’s ornate, neo-Classical monolith that spread across the shopping district’s choicest blocks.

So the transfer was a potent act, especially for people like Darian McKinney, 27, one of the two Indigenous architects entrusted with the building’s transformation. Like many other Indigenous Canadians, Mr. McKinney never went to the store, even though he grew up in Winnipeg.

Besides being unable to afford to shop at the Bay’s, he also knew that Indigenous people had often been made to feel unwelcome; from his grandparents, he was aware of a not-too-distant past when they could not leave reserves to visit cities without a pass from a so-called Indian agent.

“If you could even afford to shop at the Bay,” he said, “you felt like you didn’t belong.”

In some parts of Canada, the pass system remained in effect through the 1940s.

“The environment in downtown Winnipeg was rooted in the exclusion of Indigenous people,” said Reanna Merasty, 27, the other Indigenous architect working on the building’s makeover.

The building’s new owners, the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which represents 34 First Nations in Manitoba, envision turning it “into a space for economic and social reconciliation” for their community in Winnipeg, which is home to Canada’s largest urban Indigenous population.

The organization is still struggling to raise 20 million of the 130 million Canadian dollars that it says is needed to renovate the building.

For now, the mammoth structure sits mostly empty, with unclothed mannequins, a poster of Justin Bieber in Calvin Kleins, and dusty signage — “Store Closing. Everything must go’’ — recalling the department store’s final days.

In the 20th century, Hudson’s Bay had reinvented itself from fur trader to modern retailer, opening department stores in downtown shopping areas. But nearly a century after its opening, the Bay’s Winnipeg store closed in 2020, the victim of the pandemic and online shopping.

By 2020, only two of the building’s six floors were still in use, and its main restaurant, the Paddlewheel, had closed years before. Hudson’s Bay, which had been seeking to get rid of the building for years, tried to give it to the University of Winnipeg, but the university declined because of repair and maintenance costs.

Owned since 2008 by Richard Baker, the American real estate magnate, Hudson’s Bay was stuck with a worthless structure that — designated a heritage building in 2019, against the company’s wishes — it could not tear down, but for which it was required to keep paying taxes.

But then the Southern Chiefs’ Organization approached Hudson’s Bay with an offer to take over the building and make it into a center for Indigenous life, said the organization’s head, Grand Chief Jerry Daniels.

“It’s quite appropriate, because it’s Indigenous people who really built Hudson’s Bay,” Mr. Daniels said. “And that’s the story that needs to be told, that we really built this country.”

But others were more critical of the deal and the motivation behind it.

“The fact that the Hudson’s Bay company exploited our community, took all the resources and money they could from our community, and then left this monstrosity of a problem in the downtown core, just abandoned it — it’s colonialism personified,’’ said Niigaan Sinclair , an assistant professor of native studies at the University of Manitoba who is a member of the Anishinaabe First Nations.

Inseparable from the European colonization of Canada, Hudson’s Bay was founded in 1670 to exploit the fur trade in Rupert’s Land , a territory equal to about a third of Canada today.

King Charles II had claimed the territory as England’s and given it to his cousin Prince Rupert, who became the company’s first head, or “governor.” Hudson’s Bay enjoyed exclusive rights to exploit and colonize the territory until the land was sold in 1870 to the newly created country of Canada.

With trading posts in remote parts of Canada, Hudson’s Bay relied on Indigenous trappers for the beaver pelts and other natural resources that made up the company’s business, but many Indigenous say their ancestors were insufficiently compensated.

Without the Indigenous, the company would have never flourished, relying as it did on Indigenous knowledge of their ancestral lands and existing relations among different Indigenous communities.

“Hudson’s Bay Company’s wealth was rooted in Indigenous lands, Indigenous labor, Indigenous knowledge and Indigenous governance,’’ said Adele Perry , a professor and expert on colonialism at the University of Manitoba.

In recent years, Ms. Perry said, Canada has been forced to “recognize that the core of Canada as an entity is a colonial project.’’

Mr. Daniels said his organization had secured 110 million Canadian dollars from government sources, including loans, grants and tax breaks, and was seeking funding for the remainder. He also said that he hoped that Hudson’s Bay would offer assistance.

Hudson’s Bay’s 39th “governor,” Mr. Baker, declined an interview request for this article, instead emailing a statement. “The Southern Chiefs’ Organization fully owns and operates the building, with oversight and control of all aspects of its future development,” he said, adding that the company supported the Indigenous organization’s vision for the building.

But there is deep skepticism in Winnipeg that its makeover can be completed without significantly more financial backing. Beside the University of Winnipeg, both the provincial utility, Manitoba Hydro, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery had also rejected, as too costly, taking over the building.

Hudson’s Bay jumped at the chance to get rid of a building “that was worth nothing in the first place,” and the government is not supporting the building’s costly conversion “with enough money to actually do it right,” said Wins Bridgman, a Winnipeg-based architect who has worked with Indigenous groups, including the Southern Chiefs.

“Then we wonder why it somehow doesn’t work,” he said.

“Beware of what people give you and why they give it to you.”

OCEAN BEACH, Fire Island —It was a wretched day here last Sunday, with gusty winds and piercing rains and everything else that can go wrong on a March day, but nothing could deter the three young women from the city from seeing “Snug Cozy.”

The three—Karen Shevell, Deborah Joseph and Cher Goldman—were, performing the Manhattan singles’ rite of spring. They had driven out from the city on a miserable day, caught a crowded 1:15 P.M. ferry from Bay Shore on the mainland, and joined the hordes of other singles who were doing the same thing here—searching for a summer house they felt they could love.

And when the three saw “Snug Cozy,” it was love at first sight.

“It’s so cute,” said Miss Joseph, a 25‐year‐old secretary at a Manhattan advertising agency, as she looked around the weatherbeaten, gray‐shingled, casually furnished, four‐bedroom house, which was about a fiveminute walk from the beach. “The only thing that bothers me is that the shower is outside on the sundeck.”

Well, rarely does one find perfection in a rented singles’ summer house; roughing it is half the fun. And so the three young women decided to become “groupers” and take part shares in “Snug Cozy,” which means that for $375 each they will be allowed to spend every other summer weekend there, with a group of 13 other hopefully amiable “groupers,” no more than 8 of whom will be allowed per weekend.

It seems to happen about every March 1, a sort of panicky feeling among singles about how hot and stifling and unbearable it will be to spend the summer in the city. For many of them, the only affordable answer is to become a “grouper” and rent a share in a summer house.

Thus, for the last few weeks, thousands of them have been streaming out to the two most popular summer singles’ paradises—Fire Island and the Hamptons—to look over the available crop of summer houses. These houses rent for anywhere from $2,500 on up through $20,000, depending on size, proximity to the beach, and whether they include such amenities as a tennis court and/or swimming pool. Most, however, tend to hover in the $3,500 to $8,000 range.

What makes the singles run to these places?

“If I didn’t have a place to relax on the weekends, the pressures and the constant ‘on’ of the city would get to me after a while,” said Dr. Arthur Ashman, a divorced Manhattan dentist who was searching for a summer house to share in East Hampton last weekend.

The three young women visiting Fire Island said they had heard about “Snug Cozy” through two male friends who had signed the lease with their fingers crossed that they could get 14 other groupers to share the $6,000 rent.

“What appealed to me is that they said it would not be a crashing house, meaning no sleeping bags all over the floor or that whole scene,” Miss Joseph said. “And there won’t be any big deal about cooking in the house. Everybody’s on their own.”

Miss Goldman, 25, an administrative assistant in a Manhattan engineering firm, said she was looking forward to a good summer in “Snug. Cozy” too, despite the fact that she had recently met two young men bicycling in Central Park who told her, “All you get on Fire Island is drugs and sex.”

“All the Upper East Siders put you down if you go to Fire Island,” she said, somewhat defensively.

While the Hamptons may have more snob appeal in certain singles’ sets, being there is going to be a little harder this summer. The Town of East Hampton, for example, enacted an antigrouper ordinance last Oct. 1 that stipulates that no more than four unrelated people can share a summer house. Before, up to seven unrelated people could share a summer house, a rule that still applies in the Village of East Hampton.

The new ordinance is presently being challenged in Federal Court in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, four young groupers huddled in the Red Lantern real estate agency in East Hampton the other day, trying to decide which of the houses they had seen that day would be their retreat for the summer. They finally rented a $7,000 house with five bedrooms and a swimming pool in the Village of East Hampton, which has the seven‐person limit.

“We plan to have 10 people on a weekend, oops, I mean seven,” said a smiling Lee Munzer, 32, of Westbury, L. I., a data consultant for the New York Telephone Company. Like many other groupers, he knows that the antigrouper ordinances are seldom enforced.

Mr. Munzer and his friends said they had decided to rent a summer house together again this year because they had been in a “fun and successful one” last year in nearby Amagansett.

“We really got along well last year,” Mr. Munzer said, “except for one girl who was on a diet. She had to eat oranges, grapefriuts, tangerines and salad, and she felt she wasn’t responsible for paying her share of the food bill. We felt she should because she used toilet paper, toothpaste and paper towels.

“We finally worked it out,” he said. “She kept her food in a paper bag with her name on it, and no one else touched it, and she paid half of a regular food share, and the other members absorbed the remaining half.”

Although finicky eaters have been known to cause havoc in a grouper house, the thing that can really ruin one, according to Marsha Kaplowitz, is two house members dating each other.

“It can be very sticky if the couple breaks up and then each one starts bringing other people out to the house,” said Miss Kaplowitz, a 28‐year‐old school teacher from Floral Park, Queens, who is a member of Mr. Munzer’s house and plans to spend her entire summer there. “It’s best to keep your dating in the city, and not go out with people you meet in the Hamptons until after Labor Day.”

According to veteran groupers, the most popular singles communities are Hampton Bays and Amagansett in the Hamptons, where a car is a must to get around, and Ocean Beach, Ocean Bay Park, Kismet and Davis Park on Fire Island, where cars are banned and islanders like it that way.

Many summer houses in these areas are filled through classified ads that run in The Village Voice under a heading called “summer shares,” and read something like this:

HAMPTON BAYS. Co‐ed summer house, ovt tennis ct., beach & dock. May 7.0ct. 1, S475 full. S275 half. Call Jim nites, 879–9732.

A call to Jim elicited the information that that very evening, 40 people who had answered the ad were getting together for “a five‐ or sixhour drink” with the eight returning members of the house. Afterwards the eight, whom Jim described as “very congenial professional people,” would decide which of the 40 they liked best, much in the manner of a fraternity blackball system.

“We have room for 12 new members,” said Jim, who in reality is James Rosasco, 33, a Manhattan engineer. “The hardest part is the weedingout process. You try to make as many apologies as you can.”