The ('''HBC'''. ) is the oldest commercial
Corporation in
North America and is one of the oldest in the world. Its initials have often been satirically interpreted as "Here Before Christ". From its longtime headquarters at
York Factory on
Hudson Bay , it controlled the
Fur Trade throughout much of
British -controlled
North America for several centuries, undertaking early exploration and functioning as the ''de facto'' government in many areas of the continent prior to the arrival of large-scale settlement. Its traders and trappers forged early relationships with many groups of
First Nations and its network of trading posts formed the nucleus for later official authority in many areas of western
Canada and the
United States . In the late 19th century, its vast territory became the largest component in the newly formed
Dominion of Canada, in which the company was the largest private landowner. With the decline of the fur trade, the company evolved into mercantile business selling vital goods to settlers in the Canadian West. Today the company is best known for its
Department Store s throughout Canada.
On January 26, 2006, HBC's board unanimously agreed to a bid of $15.25 CDN/share from to lead the company.
In the
17th Century the
French had a
Monopoly on the Canadian
Fur Trade . However, two French traders,
Pierre-Esprit Radisson and
Médard Des Groseilliers , learned from the
Cree that the best fur country was north and west of
Lake Superior and that there was a "frozen sea" still further north; correctly guessing that this was the Hudson Bay, they sought French backing for a plan to set up a trading post on the Bay, thus reducing the cost of moving furs overland. However, the recently appointed French Secretary of State,
Jean-Baptiste Colbert , was trying to promote farming in the colony, and was opposed to exploration and trapping.
Radisson and des Groseilliers then approached a group of businessmen in
Boston, Massachusetts to help finance their explorations. The Bostonians agreed on the plan's merits, and brought the two to England to elicit financing. In
1668 , the English commissioned two ships, the ''
Nonsuch '' and the ''Eaglet'' to explore possible trade into Hudson Bay. The ''Nonsuch'' was commanded by Captain
Zachariah Gillam and accompanied by Groseilliers, while the ''Eaglet'' was commanded by Captain
William Stannard and accompanied by Radisson. On June 5, 1668, both ships left port at
Deptford ,
England , but the Eaglet was forced to turn back off the coast of
Ireland . After a successful trading expedition over the winter of
1668 –
1669 , the ''Nonsuch'' returned to England.
was incorporated on
May 2 ,
1670 , with a
Royal Charter from King
Charles II . The charter granted the company a monopoly over the
Indian Trade , especially the
Fur trade, in the region watered by all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay in northern Canada, an area known as
Rupert's Land after the first director of the Company,
Prince Rupert Of The Rhine . This region constitutes 3.9 million km&
2 (1.5 million square miles) in the
Drainage Basin of Hudson Bay, comprising over one-third the area of modern-day Canada and stretching into the north central
United States , but the specific boundaries were unknown at the time.
The company founded its first headquarters at Fort Nelson at the mouth of the
Nelson River in present-day northeastern
Manitoba . The location afforded convenient access to the fort from the vast interior waterway systems of the
Saskatchewan and
Red rivers. Other posts were quickly established around the southern edge of Hudson Bay in Manitoba and present-day
Ontario and
Quebec . Called "factories" (because the "factor", i.e. a person acting as a
Mercantile Agent , did business from there), these posts operated in the manner of the
Dutch fur trading operations in
New Netherland .
During the spring and summer First Nations traders, who did the vast majority of the actual trapping, travelled by
Canoe and were received at the fort to sell their pelts. In exchange they typically received metal tools and hunting gear, often imported by the company from
Germany , the centre of inexpensive manufacturing in that era. Alcohol became another payment mechanism. Native addiction to alcohol became another inducement to fur trading, with their lack of European cultural history of being innured to it and which may be related, as some claim, to a lack of a form of biological resistance to extreme drunkneness that could be exploited.
The early coastal factory model contrasted with the system of the French, who established an extensive system of inland posts and sent traders to live among the tribes of the region. The conservative nature of the English company's more centralized factory system frustrated the company's founders, Radisson and Des Groseilliers, who urged bolder explorations of the continental interior. In
1674 they switched their allegiance back to France and in
1682 they founded
La Compagnie Du Nord to directly compete with the company. After war broke out in Europe between France and England in the
1680s , the two nations regularly sent expeditions to raid and capture each other's fur trading posts. In March
1686 , the French sent a raiding party under
Chevalier Des Troyes over 1300 km (800 miles) to capture the company's posts along
James Bay . The French appointed
Pierre Le Moyne D'Iberville , who had shown extreme heroism during the raids, as commander of the company's captured posts. In
1697 , d'Iberville commanded a French naval raid on the company's headquarters at York Factory. On the way to the fort, he defeated three ships of the Royal Navy in the
Battle Of The Bay , the largest naval battle in the history of the North American Arctic. D'Iberville's depleted French force captured York Factory by a ruse in which laid siege to fort while pretending to be a much larger army. York Factory changed hands several times in the next decade. It was finally ceded permanently to what was by then the
Kingdom Of Great Britain (following the union of Scotland and England in 1707) in the
1713 Treaty Of Utrecht . After the treaty, the company rebuilt York Factory as a brick
Star Fort at the mouth of the nearby
Hayes River , its present location.
In its trade with native peoples, the company adopted the widespread use of issuing
Wool blankets, called
Hudson's Bay Point Blanket s, in exchange for the beaver pelts trapped by native hunters.
, circa 1884]]
In
1821 , the
North West Company of
Montréal and the Hudson's Bay Company merged, with a combined territory that was extended by a licence to the
North-Western Territory , which reached to the
Arctic Ocean on the north and the
Pacific Ocean on the west. Although the HBC maintained a monopoly on the fur trade during the early-mid
19th Century , there was competition from James Sinclair and
Andrew McDermot (Dermott), independent traders in the
Red River Colony .
One major event that lead to the demise of the HBC's monopoly in Rupert's Land was the
Guillaume Sayer Trial in
1849 . Sayer, a
Métis trapper and trader, was accused of the illegal trading of furs and brought to trial by the Court of Assiniboia, which was heavily stacked with either HBC officials or HBC supporters. During the trial, a crowd of armed Métis men led by
Louis Riel Sr. gathered outside the courtroom, ready to support their Métis brother peacefully or by force if necessary. Although found guilty of illegal trade by Judge Adam Thom, no fine or punishment was levied - many reports state it was due to the intimidating crowd gathered outside the courthouse. With the cry, "Le commerce est libre! Le commerce est libre!" ("Free Trade! Free Trade!"), the HBC could no longer use the courts to enforce their monopoly on the settlers of Red River. In
1870 the trade monopoly was abolished and trade in the region was opened to any
Entrepreneur . The company relinquished its ownership of Rupert's Land under the
Rupert's Land Act of
1868 enacted by the Parliament of the newly formed Dominion of Canada.
Throughout the
1820s and
1830s the company controlled nearly all trading operations in the
Oregon Country , based out of the company headquarters at
Fort Vancouver on the
Columbia River . Although authority over the region was nominally shared by the U.S. and Britain through the
Anglo-American Convention Of 1818 , company policy, enforced via Chief
John McLoughlin of the company's Columbia District, was to actively discourage U.S. settlement of the territory. The company's effective monopoly on trade virtually forbade any settlement in the region. In the early
1840s it established an outpost at
Fort Hall in present-day southeastern
Idaho along the route of the
Oregon Trail , where the outpost director displayed the abandoned wagons of discouraged settlers to those seeking to move west along the trail. The company's stranglehold on the region was broken by the first successful large wagon train to reach Oregon in
1843 , led by
Marcus Whitman . In the years that followed, thousands of
Emigrant s poured into the
Willamette Valley and in
1846 the U.S. acquired full authority of the most settled areas of the Oregon Country south of the
49th Parallel . McLoughlin, who had once turned away would-be settlers as company director, now welcomed them from his general store at
Oregon City and was later proclaimed the "Father of
Oregon ". The company retains no presence in the
Pacific Northwest of the United States today.
One aspect of the company's operations was the Hudson's Bay Company Stores, trading posts that were established across northern Canada. Today, this is the only part of the company operation remaining, in the form of department stores under the name ''The Bay''. Many Hudson's Bay Company stores were, until quite recently, the only stores in remote towns. More recently, the stores in major downtown locations have been transformed into boutiques.
In 1970, on the 300th birthday of the company, head office functions were transferred from London, England to
Winnipeg ,
Manitoba ,
Canada . As the company expanded into the east, head office functions were moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
,
Zellers , and
Home Outfitters . There is also one store in the
Greater Toronto Area known as
Designer Depot that opened in
November 2004 as part of the new
Vaughan Mills outlet mall. Six additional stores have since opened, in
Ontario and
Alberta . In addition, HBC also owns
Fields , a smaller discount chain with stores in
British Columbia and
Alberta .
''Northern Stores'' are no longer operated by HBC, but by a corporation organized in
1987 under the name The North West Company.
Simpson's department stores which were acquired by the Hudson's Bay Company in
1979 were converted to ''The Bay'' stores in 1991. In the
1970s and
1980s , HBC operated a chain of catalogue stores under the name ''Shop-Rite''. In these stores, little merchandise was displayed openly: customers made their selections from catalogues, and staff would retrieve the merchandise from store-rooms. This form of retailing, now largely disappeared, was referred to as "catalogue showroom".
The legacy of the HBC has been maintained in part by the detailed record-keeping and archiving of material by the Company. Prior to 1974, the records of the HBC were kept in the
London office headquarters. The HBC opened an Archives department to researchers in 1931. In 1974, the Hudson's Bay Company Archives were transferred from London to their Canadian headquarters in Winnipeg. In 1991 the archival records of the company were donated to the
Manitoba Archives in
Winnipeg ,
Manitoba . The collection was opened to public access in 1975.
In
1987 the HBC sold off its Canadian fur auction business to Hudson's Bay Fur Sales Canada (this company is now known as
North American Fur Auctions ). In
1991 ,
The Bay agreed to stop selling
Fur in response to complaints from people opposed to killing animals for this purpose. However, in
1997 , the Bay reopened its fur salons to meet the demand of consumers desiring to buy fur.
Animal Rights groups such as
Freedom For Animals have been campaigning to get the Bay to once again stop selling fur.
In 1994, the HBC donated the Company records to the Province of Manitoba. The appraised value of the records was nearly $60 million. A foundation, funded through the tax savings resulting from the donation, was established to support the operations of the HBCA as a division of the Archives of Manitoba, along with other activities and programs. There are more than two kilometres of documents as well as hundreds of microfilm reels now stored in a special climate-controlled vault in the Manitoba Archives Building.
In December of 2003, Maple Leaf Heritage Investments, a , the Hollywood producer.)
On March 2, 2005, the company was announced as the new clothing outfitter for the Canadian
Olympic team. The $100 million deal means that the Bay will provide clothing for the 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012 games.
The company's stock trades on the
Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol HBC.
Current members of the ,
Yves Fortier ,
David Galloway ,
Paul Gobeil ,
Kerry Hawkins ,
George Heller ,
Barbara Hislop ,
James Hume ,
Donna Kaufman ,
Peter Kaursland ,
Thomas A. Knowlton , and
Peter Mills .
