TORONTO — The face-off begins Friday. At the north end of the Toronto Eaton Centre, a sprawling downtown mall, Nordstrom will open its first store in Canada’s largest city. At its south end, an iconic redbrick building houses the newly renovated flagship store of Canada’s department store giant, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the first Canadian outlet of its subsidiary, Saks Fifth Avenue.

In the United States, department stores are retrenching. Macy’s, the country’s largest, recently announced that it was closing 100 stores.

But not so in Canada. Instead, the industry is expanding.

Hudson’s Bay, founded in 1670 as a fur trader, has spent $1 billion to renovate many of its 90 stores across the country. With the Eaton Centre location, Nordstrom will have four Canadian stores, and two more are planned. The luxury department store Holt Renfrew has paid $300 million to remake its nine outlets. And La Maison Simons is extending its reach across much of the country, after 175 years of operating only in Quebec.

Several factors are driving the plans. Far fewer department stores compete for shoppers in Canada than in the United States on a per-capita basis. High shipping costs have limited the growth of online shopping in Canada relative to the United States. And, for American retailers, Canada offers an opportunity to grow in a stable and seemingly similar market.