The first Fields store was established in Vancouver in 1950 by the chain's founders, Joseph Segal[1] and Saul "Sonny" Wosk.

[2] Zellers would reverse the takeover a few months later and make Fields and Marshall Wells into its subsidiaries, all of which were partly acquired by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1978, and fully owned by 1981.

In contrast with the much larger Zellers stores, the Fields division was intended to be a small format, extreme value retail chain for rural and urban Canadian communities.

Hudson's Bay Company announced an aggressive expansion strategy for Fields, adding 53 new stores in 2006–2007, with another 35 locations planned for 2008.

[3] But on May 1, 2012, a company called FHC Holdings Ltd. announced that it had purchased 57 Fields stores in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories from HBC with the intent of keeping those stores open.