Photo: derekrubinoff.com — *Photo: derekrubinoff.com*

Popular upscale furniture and housewares retailer West Elm will open its fourth Canadian location at Calgary's expanded Mount Royal Village. West Elm is currently advertising for a general manager for the new Calgary store.

West Elm was founded by parent company Williams-Sonoma in New York City in 2002. It retails a variety of housewares, from large furniture pieces to small gift items. It currently operates 65 stores in the United States as well as stores in Australia, the Middle East, the United Kingdom and Canada. In Canada, West Elm operates a large location in Toronto's Shops at King Liberty, a store at 995 Rue Wellington in Montreal, and separate West Elm and West Elm Market locations on Vancouver's tony South Granville strip. The Toronto store opened in October of 2008, Vancouver in September of 2012, and Montreal in June of 2013.

Remarkably, the Montreal location isn't included on West Elm's website listing the retailer's Canadian locations. This could be explained, however, by the fact that West Elm's English-only website is blocked in Quebec.

First Capital Realty is in the process of overhauling Calgary's Mount Royal Village, expanding its retail component as well as adding condominium and other uses. We'll discuss Mount Royal Village's transformation in a separate article to follow.