T. Eaton Co. Limited was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton. Of Scottish ancestry, Eaton had lived in Northern Ireland where he had learned the retail trade, before coming to Canada. The business grew to become the largest department store in the country. The mail-order part of the business began with the first catalogue published in 1884. There are countless stories of people across the nation who claimed Eaton's catalogue as a most important publication to come to their homes. Mail ordering was an easy way to shop and folks looked forward to going to the post office for their parcels. The catalogue also provided reading material, ideas to create patterns for seamstresses, entertainment and a dream book for children on a long winter's night. Once the Spring and Summer catalogue came, the Winter catalogue was recycled (Yes — people did indeed recycle a lot in those days) as wrapping paper, cut-outs for children and reading material for the outhouse! The last catalogue was published in 1976. There were expressions of great disappointment from faithful customers across the land. The department stores closed their doors in 1999.

Contact Terri Lefebvre Prince,
Heritage Researcher,
City of Yorkton, Box 400
37 Third Avenue North
Yorkton, Sask. S3N 2W3
306-786-1722
histor...@yorkton.ca