The T. Eaton Company Limited, later known as Eaton's and then Eaton, was a Canadian department store chain that was once the largest in the country. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton's grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying-offices around the globe, and a mail-order catalog that was found in the homes of most Canadians. A changing economic and retail environment in the late twentieth century, along with mismanagement, culminated in the chain's bankruptcy in 1999.
The cover of the first Eaton's catalogue, published in 1884.
The Eaton's store, the Eaton's Annex, mail order facilities and factories in Toronto, at Yonge and Queen Streets, in 1920.
Eaton's Spring and Summer Catalogue 1942
Eaton's Santa Claus Parade, 1918, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Having arrived at the Eaton's store, Santa is readying his ladder to climb up onto the building.
Timothy Eaton was an Irish businessman who founded the Eaton's department store, one of the most important retail businesses in Canada's history.
Timothy Eaton
Plaque about Eaton in Toronto
This bronze statue of Eaton (photographed in 1919) sits in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto; a second casting sits in Bell MTS Place in Winnipeg
The Eaton family's mausoleum in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto
