Hudson's Bay Company

“ The strong room contains the same rows of minutes, the same dusty piles of documents, and the journals of bygone years, but the business of a vast region is still managed there, and the old gentlemen who control the Hudson's Bay Company affairs pass their dividends as comfortably as in years gone by, with, in an occasional year, some restless spirit stirring up the echoes, to be promptly repressed and the current of events to go on as before. ”

“ Leading posts like York Factory on Hudson Bay, Fort Garry in the Red River settlement, Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River, and Fort Victoria on the Pacific Coast, were not only business centres, but kept alive a Hudson's Bay Company sentiment which those who have not met it can hardly understand. ”

“ The extension of trade has gone on in many of the rising towns of the Canadian West, where the Hudson's Bay Company was not before represented, such as Portage La Prairie, Calgary, Lethbridge, Prince Albert, Vancouver, &c. In all these points the Company's influence has been a very real and important one.
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The methods of trade, now employed, require a skill and knowledge never needed in the old fur-trading days. ”

“ Another circumstance which will tend to injure the trade very much, so long as we have the Hudson's Bay Company against us, is the premium they allow every factor or master on whatever number of skins they obtain. Those people do not care at what price they buy or whether their employés gain by them, so long as they have their premium, which sets them in opposition to one another almost as much as they are to us. ”

“ All goes to show that the Hudson's Bay Company was preserving for the generations to come a most valuable heritage. The leaders of opinion in Canada have frequently, within the last five years of the century, expressed their opinion that the second generation of the twentieth century may see a larger Canadian population to the West of Lake Superior than will be found in the provinces of the East. ”