This season the tradition of the Christmas Flower Show continues at the Palm House in the Allan Gardens Conservatory. The entire conservatory is decorated and filled with thousands of flowering plants, over 30 varieties of poinsettia and seasonal topiary masterpieces made entirely of plant material.
In previous years the Conservatory had an event called “Christmas by Candlelight”, but I couldn’t find any confirmation of that happening this year. I have never been to one of those, but apparently it is quite beautiful with the lighted displays sprinkled throughout the conservatory.
I usually pay a visit every Christmas to the Conservatory to take in the Flower Show. The displays were quite sparse this year and I didn’t sense the same care and attention to detail displayed in previous years. Regardless, it’s always restful and calming in the Palm House:
Although the Hudson’s Bay store is now long gone from what was their flagship store at Yonge and Queen, the Christmas windows have been resuscitated. Yes! “The Bay Christmas windows” are back for 2025, courtesy of Cadillac Fairview, and I (along with many, many others) am very happy about this!
Background
On a frigid Sunday evening, December 14, crowds gathered along Yonge Street as Cadillac Fairview officially unveiled the return of Toronto’s iconic holiday windows at the former Hudson’s Bay flagship at Queen and Yonge. For the first time since Hudson’s Bay shuttered its Canadian department stores earlier this year, the illuminated display bays once again glowed with festive scenes, drawing families, tourists, and longtime downtown residents back to a ritual that has defined Toronto’s holiday streetscape for more than a century.
This year’s windows mark both a revival and a reinvention. With the department store behind the glass now closed, Cadillac Fairview has repositioned the historic facade as a leased experiential platform, beginning with a holiday activation by Mars Wrigley Canada. The confectionery giant has taken over seven prominent windows along the Yonge Street side of the building between Queen and Richmond, transforming them into animated tableaux designed to restore a sense of wonder to the corner while signalling a new future for one of the city’s most storied retail landmarks.
Cadillac Fairview, which owns the former Hudson’s Bay and Saks Fifth Avenue complex connected to CF Toronto Eaton Centre, has made clear that the holiday windows are no longer tied to a single department store tenant. Instead, the landlord is treating the building’s extensive street-facing windows along Yonge, Bay, and Richmond streets as a stand-alone experiential and media asset.
Publicly, Cadillac Fairview has framed the initiative as an effort to honour and preserve a cherished Toronto tradition, even as it explores new commercial and cultural uses for the space. Internally, the move also reflects a pragmatic response to the closure of Hudson’s Bay, which left a massive downtown anchor vacant after the retailer filed for creditor protection with more than a billion dollars in debt and failed to secure a buyer.
By reviving the windows, Cadillac Fairview is extracting value from the building’s most visible asset while longer-term redevelopment and re-tenanting plans are evaluated. The Queen Street frontage remains partially blocked due to Ontario Line construction at the intersection, but the Yonge Street run is fully active for the holidays, with additional bays on Bay and Richmond streets being marketed to future partners.
Workers putting finishing touches on one of the display windows.
Although the windows are not as elaborate or intriguing as those in past years, it is wonderful to see that an effort has been made to revive a Christmas tradition at Yonge and Queen Street.
The Fairmont Royal York’s hotel lobby has taken on what hotel staff label a winter wonderland appearance, decorated with reminders of reindeer and other items synonymous with Christmas.
Guests now arriving at the Fairmont Royal York are greeted by pathways lined with Victorian-style lampposts and snow-covered evergreens, creating scenes straight out of a winter fairy tale, along with the Christmas tree framed by elegant drapery and towering nutcrackers. Guests continue their journey through a serene winter garden gazebo or stop for champagne or tea at the hotel’s bustling lobby lounge, “Clockwork“, its white ironwork gates evoking the entrance to a palace. Every vignette is dressed in frosted whites, icy crystals, lush greenery, and glistening snow.
Well, it’s that time again… love it or hate it, we’re on the countdown to Christmas.
I’ve always liked the way Christmas comes together in the city, so this past weekend I took a little walk around a few downtown spots to see how things are ramping up for Christmas. The temperature was -15 with the wind chill so I tended not to linger overly long at any one stop on my wanderings.
Winter Glow 2025
I started my little jaunt at Yonge-Dundas Square (I refuse to call it by that incredibly asinine new name). From December 11th through 21st there is an event on here called Winter Glow 2025.
Winter Glow is in its third year at Yonge-Dundas Square. It’s basically a holiday festivity filled with lights, music, festive flavours, classic rides, and community cheer.
This year, Epilepsy Toronto is the sponsor and presenting partner of Winter Glow. The organization brings a Holiday Market to the Square, filling it with artisan stalls, photo ops, the Polar Point Bar, fire-pits, and photos with Santa. There is also a mini-midway with a carousel and a 45-foot high Ferris wheel:
The Eaton Centre
Directly across the street from the Square is the venerable Eaton Centre. I started on the north end of the mall, making my way south through the masses of shoppers milling about:
Passing through Simons I stopped to appreciate some beautiful music being performed by a trio there:
In the middle of the mall there were several giant reindeer:
Eaton Centre’s massive (114-foot) Christmas tree made a reappearance this year. The ever-enterprising Eaton Centre was offering shoppers to have their picture taken by a professional photographer with the holiday tree as the backdrop (portraits were $10 a pop).
With the giant tree for a backdrop, these two people were getting their selfies high on the walkway above the shoppersThe 114-foot high Eaton Centre Christmas tree. The tree changes colour every few minutes.
Once or twice an hour the tree launches its “Snow Show”, and it snows in the Eaton Centre, like this:
Trinity Square Park
Just out the west door of the mall is Trinity Square Park, home to the Church of the Holy Trinity. Given all the lights in the walkway and trees, I’m sure the area would look much prettier at night, but it was kind of interesting in the daylight, nonetheless:
Brookfield Place
I have shot Brookfield Place (181 Bay Street) many, many times but have never tired of it. The Allen Lambert Galleria is simply one of the most magnificent backdrops in downtown Toronto. That beautiful, arched, soaring ceiling is a photographer’s dream.
This year they have an installation entitled Snowfall: Frost, created by Studio F Minus. The work is inspired by the architectural motif of the Allen Lambert Galleria, the geometry of a single snowflake, and the allure of a freshly frosted-over window pane.
Studio F Minus took the fractal pattern and applied the concept to the construction of snowflakes in nature. Beginning with a “Y” shape drawn from the Galleria, then repeating and rotating that shape to create a new crystalline structure. There was a sign for visitors to Brookfield Place, which encouraged them to touch Snowfall: Frost. When a hand is run along the sculpture it casts a shadow in the field of light, the same way you leave a trail when drawing on a frosted window:
Continuing eastward through Brookfield Place to the Yonge Street side, there was another impressive homage to Christmas:
Berczy Park
Moving on to the Front Street East-Church Street area, I paid a visit to Berczy Park. Someone had adorned the little dogs on the Berczy Park fountain with seasonal scarves. Very cute:
Across from the dog fountain, a Snoopy-like pup kept watch on the visitors:
I was quickly losing the light of the day so I wrapped it up and headed home, passing through Berczy’s seasonal arch on the way to Wellington Street East:
Stay tuned for more posts of Toronto at Christmastime!
After years of planning to attend and then never going (hearing reports of the crush from massive crowds had turned me off), I ventured down to the Distillery District’s Winter Village last night. Luckily (for me, anyway) we’d had the big “storm” last night and the weather was not great; this kept a lot of people away. The event has become so popular and crowded over the years that the Distillery’s Winter Village is now a ticketed, timed event – at least during the evening hours on the weekends.
I’ve always wanted to photograph this event during a white Christmas, so last night’s storm worked in my favour. Also, the temperature kept a lot of people away: it was -12°, with the “feels like” wind chill dropping the temp to a balmy, breezy -27°. I bundled up and was good to go, although my hands were turning into blocks of ice while hanging on to the camera… talk about suffering for your art.
This year’s 51-foot tall white spruce Christmas tree has been designed by Parfums Christian Dior. It features 70,000 twinkling lights, 400 custom midnight blue ornaments, 1,700 shiny and matte gold balls, and 1,000 custom DIOR star charms. Over 500 hours of labour went into creating this sparkling, one-of-a-kind tree.
The historic Distillery District has 65+ local shops, restaurants and cafés. Many of these were in full operation for the Winter Village event, plus vendor cabins offered specially curated seasonal items and gifts. Several food cabins also lined the cobblestone streets.
Distillery Winter Village, shot with a fogged-up lens & six-point star filter
The Hudson’s Bay flagship store at Queen and Yonge Streets traditionally have superb Christmas windows, filled with a lot of intricate detail. I ventured down to the store last night with camera in hand and great expectations of a warm and fuzzy experience. As a Christmas traditionalist, though, I was incredibly disappointed: instead of the traditional cheerful Christmas vignettes, the window displays this year are all about the commercialism and automation of Christmas gift giving. The emphasis this year is on providing an interactive “virtual experience” which involves the spectator via their phone.
Since Saks Fifth Avenue moved into the eastern side of the building a few years ago, The Bay Christmas windows have never been the same. Anyone who’s lived in the city for a while and gone down to The Bay to check these out will see that now there are only five Bay windows remaining on the Queen Street side, near the west end. I remember when those fantastically-dressed windows stretched all the way across Queen Street and down Yonge to Richmond Street, utilizing all the Bay windows. At one time, The Bay’s Christmas windows were easily on par with Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s in New York; it was an awesome site, but is no more.
The Windows Theme This Year
For the first time ever, the digital extension will now transport Canadians inside the windows from anywhere across the country. To immerse themselves in the whimsy and wonder of the windows, customers just scan the QR code, point the camera at a surface and click to be transported into the augmented reality. Once ‘inside,’ device motion and screen interactions let people explore elements from all five of the holiday windows using both the front and rear cameras on their smartphones. An added bonus: Holiday enthusiasts can share a photo or video using the AR experience on Instagram or Facebook Story, tagging @hudsonsbay and using the hashtag #MyBayHolidayWindow for a chance to win one of five $1,000 gift cards to shop in-store and on TheBay.com*.
The unique QR code can be found at select Hudson’s Bay stores, on The Bay’s social media channels, on The Bay gift cards, and on packages ordered on TheBay.com throughout the holiday season.
“For more than 100 years, these holiday windows have been quintessential to the Toronto experience,” says Alexander Meyer, Chief Customer Officer at The Bay. “With the digital transcendence of this year’s windows, we are creating a whole new level of connectivity for our customers, not only in Toronto but throughout Canada.”1
The Bay’s Christmas Windows: 2022
The windows this year did not really lend themselves to still images as all the objects were in motion; instead I’ve captured a little video of each of the five window vignettes:
Mail Room The inner workings of the technology used to scan, sort and process all of Santa’s letters. A giant computer spits out a list of names while a map of the globe gives Santa directions to find all the boys and girls around the world.
Ornament-Making Department A snapshot of how some signature ornaments are painted and detailed with precision and care. A giant mechanical hand carefully selects each colour to be applied before the finished crafts are sent out for people to decorate their homes.
Gifting Department A glimpse into all of the parcels being wrapped, sorted and packed by robots working in sync to keep up with the flow of presents coming down the conveyor belt. Plus, new technology allows onlookers to press a button on the glass and one very friendly robot will want to give you a high-five and take a selfie.
Candy Cane Department A look at how the magical treats are made and gently packaged with a robotic arm before being dropped into queue to be sent in Santa’s sleigh and delivered to the children of the globe.
Snow-Making Department Ever wonder how snow is actually made? A bounty of magical frozen flakes come to life in this winter wonderland. Passersby can snap photos in adult and kid-sized cutouts on the exterior of the windows and join in with the snow angels.
A Few Christmas’s Ago…
Christmas 2018 was a great year for The Bay’s Christmas windows. Here’s a few of the windows from that season:
I really love Allan Gardens. This Christmas show looks really wonderful. I will have to go and take a look