>A huge portion of the Canadian population is concentrated in a few small areas. Retail does not need to be evenly distributed over square area. Those clusters

>A huge portion of the Canadian population is concentrated in a few small areas. Retail does not need to be evenly distributed over square area. Those clusters also happen to be very far apart, and compared to the US, not actually large in size other than the TO/MTL cluster. I think the geography of Canada matters to retail success. Retailers that try to cover the market, by, for example, opening a store in Edmonton like Nordstrom did, face real logistical costs. Holt Renfrew does not cover Edmonton, for example. >This is revisionist history. Zellers (Hudson’s Bay) was killing itself well before Target arrived (very briefly) in Canada. Zellers was certainly struggling, but I believe some version of Zellers would still exist today if not for the Target acquisition, but I guess it's not possible to know that.