In good company
When I was growing up in the Maritimes, Hudson’s Bay Company was nowhere to be found in my childhood history texts. Provincial curricula tended to focus on regional and local histories, and my lessons in Nova Scotia were filled with tales of the Acadians, the Order of Good Cheer, and the seemingly endless eighteenthcentury clashes between the British in Halifax and the French at Fortress Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island.
It wasn’t until I moved out West in the late 1990s that I was properly introduced to the story of North America’s oldest company. Back then, as a young newspaper reporter, I never dreamed that I would one day be the editor-inchief of HBC’s former flagship magazine, The Beaver (now known, of course, as Canada’s History, run by Canada’s National History Society).
I also didn’t realize that many of the communities in the Northwest, including major cities such as Edmonton and Victoria, began as HBC outposts during the fur-trade-era that dominated life in the region for more than two centuries.
On May 2, 2020, HBC will mark its 350th anniversary. It’s an incredible accomplishment and a testament to the Company’s ability to change with the times. In this issue, we feature several stories that explore HBC’s impacts on Canada and on North America. Writers Karine Duhamel, Joe Martin, and Christopher Moore provide important perspectives on topics such as HBC’s impact on Indigenous peoples and the far-reaching business legacy of the Company.
I’m guessing that Canadians today are most familiar with HBC as a retail chain. Ever since the Company opened its flagship department stores in the early 1900s, it has been at the forefront of consumer culture. In many cities, the HBC department store was central to community life, a place to gather, to socialize, and, of course, to shop.
When I consider HBC’s legacy, I think of its marvellous archival and artifacts collections, both of which are held in Winnipeg by the Archives of Manitoba and the Manitoba Museum, respectively. These collections are incredible historical resources for researchers, writers, genealogists, and the general public.
As HBC marks its 350th, let’s raise a toast to the Company’s employees. Indigenous and non-Indigenous, women and men, over the centuries they helped to transform a risky trading venture at Hudson Bay into a fur-trading empire and then later an international retail icon, forever changing the course of the continent.