Beads To Billions: The Story of the H.B.C.

Beads To Billions: The Story of the H.B.C.

ARTICLES

The business of Adventurers now sells moccasins to the Indians, Pablum to papooses, and bargains to suburbanites

RAY GARDNER

part 1

at some point remaining can also the Hudson's Bay business's Winnipeg department keep scored a minor triumph over its archrival, the T. Eaton enterprise, through snapping up the exclusive Canadian rights to "every-day-in-the-week pantie briefs." These dated drawers, the Bay became joyful to announce, got here in sets of seven, "each a distinct colour with the day of the week fantastically embroidered in contrasting color on the left leg." At a scant 95 cents per scantie, Winnipeggers snapped

them up. in the meantime, a number of blocks down Portage Avenue, Eaton's became doing a swift business in a novel line of its own: boy's cowboy fits, comprehensive with chaps.

This become an remoted even though fairly average skirmish within the commercial cold struggle the Bay (full identify: the Governor and business of Adventurers of England buying and selling into Hudson's Bay) is at this time waging during the Canadian West towards Eaton's, the invader from the East.

For years this pair of merchandising giants has been grappling, pitting discount towards cut price in Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Calgary, however it wasn't until early this yr that their contention was fanned to its existing warmth.

Eaton's became the aggressor. by purchasing up David Spencer Ltd., the nation's fourth greatest branch store chain, Eaton's pushed their own chain— by some distance Canada's biggest—to the Pacific Coast. There, in Victoria and Vancouver, they introduced a new challenge to the Bay, the third greatest chain. (Simpson's is 2d.) The Bay now confronted Eaton competition in each of the six Western cities during which it operates department shops.

Eaton's are rated by way of some observers as tough competition for the Governor and Adventurers to handle. They're everyday to be particularly expert at pushing anything from witch hazel to roller skates and their mail-order catalogue has won its location in the sample of Canadian lifestyle.

but anybody who has delved into the Adventurers' heritage has no qualms in regards to the merchandising capabilities of a corporation which once made a practice of swapping the Indians two purple feathers for one beaver epidermis, or which even nowadays sells chewing gum and outboard motors to the Eskimos, and Coca Cola and cowboy information to the Indians.

here's the style Bay officials appear to suppose about it too. Publicly, as a minimum, they gained't even admit there's a war on. Eaton's invasion of Victoria and Vancouver is considered conveniently hobbies, if spirited, competition. And, says Philip Alfred Chester, the tall, silver-haired managing director of the company in Canada, "we adore competitors."

Chester, an guaranteed, enjoyable Englishman who's Canadianized to the point the place he uses each "guy" and "bloke," remembers that his company is the oldest of its form on this planet (280 years next may additionally) and, away again in 1682 turned into working the first, chain keep system on the North American continent. "The Hudson's Bay company," he remarks coolly, "has experienced every thing. And survived."

For over 200 years the Bay business become absolute ruler of basically half of Canada. It may marry a person, or grasp him. It may coin money, and did

He doesn't say that Eaton's problem in British Columbia is just an extra fleeting interlude in the long life of the Hudson's Bay company. however he infers it. As Chester, and most different Canadians smartly recognize, the three provincial capitals where his company operates retailers (Winnipeg, Edmonton and Victoria) advanced from Hudson's Bay buying and selling posts and the Bay as soon as owned the land on which four of Eaton's stores now stand.

The warfare is being fought chiefly in full-web page newspaper advertisements and with earnings and slogans (each stores harp on the promise of delight or your money back). Waging it are rival corporations of high-powered salesmen who comprehend a bargain in kitchen linoleum or paring knives after they see one, backed up via such auxiliary troops because the comparative clients who steal into the enemy keep to deliver again intelligence on fees and sales gimmicks.

however compared with one of the scrapping the Bay has done during the past to turn a decent pound be aware for its English traders, it is kid's stuff.

in the late 17th century the Bay fought a 10-yr battle (comprehensive with naval battles) towards the French on Hudson Bay. And early last century it waged a wasteland crusade of ambush, hunger and sudden dying in opposition t the North West business over the same Canadian West the place

the Eaton forces have chosen to make a stand.

The Nor'westers rubbed out 22 Bay men in a single bloodbath but the bulk of the Adventurers lived to look the North West enterprise go to the wall. Eaton's can count number itself lucky it is not going to the mat with the Hudson's Bay company of a century or two ago.

In its swashbuckling days the Hudson's Bay enterprise stuck strictly to the fur exchange, however these days it is a merchandising giant doing more than $100 hundreds of thousands worth of enterprise a year. each one of these thousands and thousands pour into the tills of the business's six big shops. The rest are gleaned from the fur exchange and a mess of odd sidelines.

In all of the heritage of commerce there has on no account been anything quite like this company which owes its starting to a couple of keen French beaver trappers (Radisson and Groseilliers) and a businessminded English king (Charles II). And even these days it is still entertaining.

The Eskimo fashions his igloo with a Hudson's Bay snow knife, the Indian buys his machine-made moccasins from a company publish and the paleface graduate of the school of Manitoba goes to the Bay to appoint his convocation dress.

The Bay runs a Persian lamb ranch in South Africa, an apartment condominium, a fur-breeding farm, monstrous beaver preserves, a museum, a transport fleet, an outstanding quarterly magazine, a radio community and laboratory, a cargo airline, a few golf lessons, and a wholesale branch which peddles tea, espresso, tobacco, candy and its personal brand

of bottled liquor — rye, Scotch, rum and gin:

The Bay sells rich prairie farm land and dabbles in Alberta oil. It sells the rights to bushes, hay and oyster shells on 30 islands it owns in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The Bay's retail keep operations include 14 small shops in cities from Quebec to British Columbia and 35 universal shops in small farming, railroad, mining and paper towns. Its modern save within the gold-mining boom city of Yellowknife on great Slave Lake ran its product sales to $1 million in its opening 12 months with such promoting stunts as a new seem trend display.

The Bay owns 202 fur trading posts scattered over Canada from Atlantic to Pacific and from the forty ninth parallel to the Arctic straits. Its fur earnings are the world's second greatest—most effective the Russian govt has it crushed.

The enterprise as soon as owned two fifths of Canada and held a trading monopoly over a good deal greater of it. When Charles II granted the business its constitution on can also 2, 1670, the entire territory drained by way of rivers flowing into Hudson's Bay went with it. Charles had no approach of realizing, but this protected parts of Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, the Northwest territories, most of Saskatchewan and all of Manitoba.

Over this domain the business changed into king. It made legal guidelines and enforced them. It could hang a man or marry him. It issued its personal forex and levied its own taxes. It had the energy to lift a military and to declare war.

At its height the enterprise no longer simplest held regal sway over most of Western Canada, but it also changed into operating buying and selling posts in Russian Alaska, Siberia, California, and Hawaii.

other than the Canadian Pacific it's the best Canadian enterprise to win renowned point out in school heritage books or to have itself glamourized in a Hollywood movie. The business would just as soon overlook Hollywood's tribute. "The Hudson's Bay company," starring Paul Muni and Laird Cregar, became out to be this kind of Technicolor turkey that Bay executives shunned its Canadian greatest.

The Bay surrendered the fundamental part of its territories, below pressure and for a value, to the newly born Dominion of Canada in 1869. Its fee changed into £300,000, 45,000 acres surrounding one hundred twenty trading posts, and one twentieth of all arable land between the Rockies and Lake Winnipeg. All in all this left the Bay with roughly 7 million acres. lengthy ago the enterprise pulled out of Siberia and Hawaii, however even nowadays it still clings to a number of of its historic trappings.

It nonetheless can pay £300 a yr to the Bishop of Rupert's Land (Bay territory became known as Rupert's Land after the company's first governor, Prince Rupert) and stitchés its initials, H.B.C., on the red ensign, because it has had a appropriate to do for more than a century.

It persists in calling its shareholders owners, its board chairman the governor, and its annual meeting the time-honored courtroom. And it remains obligated —or feels it is—to fork out two elks and two black beaver skins to contributors of the Royal family unit on every occasion they consult with Canada. The Duke of Windsor and the existing King and Queen have collected.

In all different respects the enterprise is as up to date as aircon and fluorescent lighting fixtures can make it.

London Pulls the Strings

DERBYSHIRE-BORN Philip Chester, the fifty three-

yr-historical managing director for Canada, runs his empire from Hudson's Bay condominium on Winnipeg's main highway only a musket shot from the company's historical castle Garry. The ruins of one fort will also be considered from the office windows.

Chester's colleagues name him the up to date George Simpson. Simpson became the merchandising genius who revitalized the enterprise after its merger in

1821 with the North West business which climaxed their ruinous war. Simpson turned into Canadian governor at the peak of the Bay's fur alternate greatness. Chester, a chartered accountant who joined the Adventurers in 1923, put new hearth into the company after it had taken a beating in the 30's.

in step with a company tradition that discourages personal publicity, Chester has seldom been photographed and his interviews with the press are at all times on an off-the-checklist groundwork.

even though the company's enterprise is executed well-nigh completely in Canada, its accurate route nonetheless comes from the London board headed by way of Sir Patrick Ashley Cooper, its 30t.h governor. It is still 90% British-owned and its annual meetings are held in Beaver corridor, Garlick Hill, London. Chester heads the Canadian Committee that conducts the company in Canada, and is a member of the London board.

The fur exchange continues to be the company's most fascinating point. Its personnel supervisor is burdened with the aid of younger guys who hanker after Arctic adventure and by journal writers who romanticize the fur dealer's lifestyles, to the dismay of the fur dealer. Many young aspirants believe they'll get a whip and a dog team when they be part of the provider. Some picture themselves playing poker with the Mounties.

There is no enterprise edict against the fur trader engaging the law in a online game of penny ante, but he'll go a long solution to discover such romantic trappings as a dog crew or an specific canoe brigade. nowadays the lonely outposts are linked through bush pilots who bounce in on skis and pontoons.

The regular Hudson's Bay publish consists of three sparkling white constructions—house, warehouse and shop. every so often there's an Indian condo, a crude, windowless shack, fully bare apart from an old stove. right here the Indian is welcome to reside the night, rent free, when he comes to the post to swap his muskrat skins for a new sewing machine for his squaw.

more commonly than not, the publish supervisor's handiest neighbors are Indians or Eskimos. in many places the Indians cannot communicate English and the post supervisor has to be taught the Indian lingo. The more impartial Eskimos pretty much insist on the white man learning the native tongue.

relations between the Bay man and the natives are pleasant, however intimacy isn't encouraged. Economically and socially, the Indian has been kept within the equal position he became thrust into when the primary Bay man came to make a profit out of his looking skill.

Some posts are flanked by way of an Indian Affairs nursing station, and at others there are climate* bureaus. on occasion there is a priest or a Mountie for business.

The fur dealer's lifestyles remains one of isolation and loneliness but the Bay gives him with a multitude of civilization's comforts. Even in the barren Arctic he has electrical energy, hot and bloodless working water and indoor plumbing in the enterprise house.

Many a home-searching city dweller would be pleased about a condo such because the Bay provides for the put up supervisor and his family. The usual condominium has three or 4 bedrooms, mixture dwelling and eating room and entirely contemporary kitchen. The experimental condo the Bay built in Winnipeg before constructing one in the wilds cost $12,000.

The house is absolutely furnished via the business with everything from soupspoons to nutcrackers, 2,seven hundred gadgets in all. When a chesterfield at a submit on Baffin Island suggests signals of wear, the business's huge Canso flying boat zooms in from Winnipeg and disgorges a brand new one. And the post supervisor's spouse needn't be troubled that it'll conflict along with her drapes or rug. The domestic furnisher in Winnipeg knows the color of every pair of drapes and of each rug from Pond Inlet, on Baffin Island, to Tuktuk within the Western Arctic.

"battle and Peace" at each publish

The enterprise gives each and every post with a common library, operating from "Anthony antagonistic" to "struggle and Peace," and provides three books to it each and every 12 months. Fifty or extra pocket books are despatched to each put up with the yearly components.

The enterprise considerations itself with every personal issue of its outpost personnel—from pregnancies to the offspring's schooling.

Housing, furnishings, mild, gas and meals — which is ordered in massive quantities a few times a year—are supplied at a fraction of can charge. The put up supervisor can pay $25 a month every for himself and his wife and an further $4 to $15 for each and every newborn, counting on the newborn's age, which, naturally, regulates his capability to devour enterprise groceries.

The enterprise prefers to have married men on its isolated posts however offers domestic aid for its bachelor managers. nowadays it frowns on the old Arctic customized, nevertheless ordinary 10 years in the past, of the submit supervisor taking to himself a local wife on a strictly casual groundwork.

put up little ones are provided with correspondence - faculty classes unless they reach 10 whem the business kicks in vrith a contribution towards teaching them within the city. It exams up on the

nutrition and calory consumption of its families and makes sure that even the Arctic dealer is on a superbly balanced weight loss plan.

every submit has a large scientific chest, including some dental and surgical instruments. Free medical tips is purchasable.

The post manager is encouraged to grow some of his personal food. The enterprise hired botanists to look at gardening within the Arctic and promotes an annual gardening competition among the posts.

The put up manager stands a pretty good chance of saving a very good part of his income. Roy and Sheila Allen, who run the publish at Grassy Narrows, Northern Ontario, determine it prices them simplest $10 a month for extras above the $50 they pay for food and housing. This summer they blew themselves to a nonbush vacation in Vancouver.

The better halves Gossip in Morse

Some other halves take to lifestyles among the Indians and Eskimos like a under the influence of alcohol takes to H.B.C. most appropriate Procurable, and some don't. Sheila took to it. She became a bride of a few weeks when Roy introduced her to Grassy Narrows, a four-acre island in an isolated lake.

I met her ultimate may additionally when she had been there 10 months and he or she become happy and contented though she hadn't set foot off the island since November. She and her husband and a younger clerk are its sole inhabitants and you may stroll completely round it in five minutes.

The Allens are host to extra paleface guests than most publish people. Grassy Narrows is in the coronary heart of fish and online game country which attracts flocks of wealthy American tourists. Even in wintry weather americans fly overhead taking pot pictures at wolves prowling on the frozen lakes.

In the entire North there's likely no woman more attuned to the lifestyles than Jo Harvey whose husband Jim manages Osnaburgh condo, one more lakefronting post in Northern Ontario. Her family association with the fur change goes returned basically a century and a half. Her superb-grandfather became a Hudson's Bay fur trader and she herself become born at Moose manufacturing unit, a post that dates returned to the very starting of the enterprise in the seventeenth century.

She has her own crew of Eskimo sled dogs, she's an accomplished angler, some of the quickest women with a Morse key in all the north, and as a marksman she may whip Annie Oakley.

during the long, weary winters post other halves master the Morse code and swap northern gossip and recipes. every put up has radiotelegraph or phone gadget in addition to a radio set for software listening, designed via the company's personal radio laboratory. within the Arctic, reception is terrific; New Zealand and London come roaring in.

At spring breakup, after they have got traded their wintry weather fur catch and earlier than they turn to their summer time pursuits of berry identifying or fishing, the Indians hang around the enterprise shop, loafing and pulling on tailormade cigarettes. The Indians at Grassy slender go for snuff in a big approach. guys, girls and children are addicts.

The Indian has adopted the white man's dress, however he's no Beau Brummell. His coat seldom fits his pants and, for that rely, the patches on his pants and coat in no way match either. He perpetually wears rubbers over his moccasins and the peaked cap is the vogue.

The historic enterprise still makes greater barter than money offers with the natives but the bartering is now executed with the dollar instead of the beaver epidermis as the basic ordinary. When an Eskimo brings in his seize of white fox he is advised its value in greenbacks and he then knows he might also have that many bucks value of grub or ammunition. If he desires, he may additionally have cash. "however," as one Bay man put it, "there's nowhere else he can spend it."

The Eskimo and Indian trappers, as well as the Adventurers themselves, are completely on the mercy of the bewildering caprices of style. The native may additionally return to a post in the spring encumbered down with furs he has traveled a whole lot of miles to capture best to discover a brand new style in vogue has rendered them just about worthless. here is a quirk of the paleface world the native can't fathom.

In lean years the business grubstakes the natives. In some areas the larger the bill he is allowed to run up the stronger the Indian feels. The top of the line hunter is given essentially the most credit score and to be deeply within the gap increases his prestige.

The natives' tastes and needs range extremely from area to region and the company is obliged to cater to the native whims and dictates.

Violins on James Bay

The Indians on James Bay go wild over cowboy facts and those at Lac Seul are only as crazy about Coke, chocolate bars and aircraft joy using. after they're in the chips, which is not regularly, they consider little of blowing $30 on a flip to the town of Hudson 18 air miles away. At treaty time, when they are given a small government handout, the Indians wedge themselves into the company keep and take pleasure in an orgy of chocolate bar munching and Coke guzzling.

The James Bay Indian, who as soon as smoked nothing but heavy black Irish twist, now prefers tailor-made cigarettes and rollings, but he nevertheless likes to play the violin. The ancient Scottish servants of the business's early days on Hudson Bay taught the natives the way to saw out a tune.

The Indian and Eskimo are eligible for the household allowance and all the way through the North the company helps the government distribute it. The native isn't given his baby bonus in money however attracts it in form. each publish stocks a whole lot of Pablum for the local papooses.

The enterprise still carries a deliver of beads (made in Czechoslovakia) however they're no longer the fast-moving item they once were. The Indian has lost most of his handicraft skill and, in some regions, even buys his moccasins from the company put up. Some of these are made on the machines of the Casey Jones company in Winnipeg, others are bought from one tribe of Indians and offered to one other.

The business purchases surplus moccasins from British Columbia Indians and retails them to the native on James Bay. Wolverine pelts are bought in British Columbia and sold to Eskimos who use the fur to trim their parkas, and deerskin bought from Eskimos at Chesterfield Inlet is offered to the natives of Baffin Land.

The Bay's most primitive valued clientele are the Bathurst Inlet Eskimos who visit the business submit most effective yearly to purchase tea, tobacco and a few ammunition. just a few of them nonetheless hunt with a bow made from musk ox bones.

The company has certainly not tried to sell an icebox to the Eskimo however lately it did are attempting to sell aluminum canoes to the Indian. They hit the market with an immense thud. a number of braves tried them out and mentioned the con-

traptions made a satan of a racket in uneven water. "No sale," they informed the publish managers.

The problem the company faces in moving heaps of a whole bunch components and building substances over the vast Northland is monumental.

Fifty tons of materials are necessary to build an entire publish and nine instances out of 10 every nail must be flown in. When the submit web site is on a river that doesn't give satisfactory touchdown room for the business's colossal Canso, elements are ferried in via the small Norsemen plane. The company's three planes elevate about 1,000,000 pounds of cargo a 12 months as well as flying district managers, charge accountants and the precise brass from one conclusion of the nation to the different.

Its fleet of polar ships sails near 60,000 miles a year distributing 9,000 a whole lot elements from Ungava Bay within the eastern Arctic to the Beaufort Sea within the Western Arctic.

From early September to late July two polar ships, the fort Ross and the Nigalik, struggle through the ice-strewn sea distributing substances and identifying up furs in a dangerous race against freezeup. This summer, a brand new all-wooden ship, the castle Hearne, sailed from Quebec during the Panama Canal to join the company fleet within the Western Arctic.

Queen of the H.B.C. fleet is the Prince Rupert, an additional new ship. The Rupert, successor to the famed Nascopie, is an all-metal vessel of 1,020 heaps. She winters in Halifax and in June heads

subsequent subject

the day prior to this's Hero — The George younger Story

What's came about to Canada's optimal swimming champion?

He's hidden in a $50 per week job in Philadelphia. Why?

read Robert Thomas Allen's article in Sept. 1 Maclean's, on sale

August 26.

north for Hudson Bay. From July except freezeup in October she works the Bay, reloading a number of times at Churchill. A pair of business schooners, the fortress Charles and fortress Severn, work out of Churchill and Moosonee on James Bay, and Newfoundland sealers are chartered to supply Baffin Island.

The premiere aim of all this northern activity is to pour a circulation of furs into the enterprise's public sale properties in London and big apple. The company's auctions, held in London in view that 1672 and more recently in long island (by Lampson, Fraser & Huth, a totally owned subsidiary), are world trendy. a third public sale house is being in-built Montreal and fur income should be held there starting in January.

a big vendor on the London and big apple auctions is Persian lamb from South and Southwest Africa. Years ago the enterprise pioneered lamb ranching in Africa. today so many Persian lambs are raised that their fur offers that area with an important export product.

inspite of its pre-eminence within the fur business, that you can't count number on buying a fur coat with the hammer-pricked initials H.B.C. on the internal of the skins for those who store at a Hudson's Bay keep. The business buys its coats on the open market, as does any other retailer.

besides its far-flung chain of posts, the enterprise also operates eight uncooked fur gathering depots all over Canada where it purchases pelts from trappers and ranchers. The Winnipeg

depot even contracts for the skins of captive animals declared surplus by way of the city zoo.

When the business first deploy store on Hudson's Bay in the seventeenth century, it began to tap the richest beaver nation on earth. greater than two hundred years of indiscriminate slaughter almost wiped out the beaver in enormous areas of the North. In a moment of enlightened self-activity, the enterprise eventually began to top off the Bay place. nowadays it continues six beaver preserves around James Bay, comprising 46.000 rectangular miles.

The company is additionally attempting to restock the James Bay preserves with marten.

At its hen's Hill ranch outdoor Winnipeg, Superintendent invoice Douglas raises a whole lot of foxes, mink, fisher, marten and even the peculiar lynx. here Douglas will mate a Greenland blue fox with an Arctic white fox within the hope of establishing an unique new fur so one can set Paris on her ears. however what occurs? The baby foxes should be either all blue or all white, or a couple of may be white and a few blue. None might be spotted.

Blankets and liquor are no longer staple objects of the fur exchange as they as soon as had been, however the enterprise remains fashionable for both. The Indian can't find the money for Bay blankets and the govt forbids him to the touch any one's liquor. luckily, the American vacationer goes wild over each. A subsidiary, the Hudson's Bay company, Inc., peddles the business hootch in 28 states of the

Union and sells stacks of the famous H.B.C. point blankets. The blankets are made in Britain.

The business operates a big wholesale difficulty, with a cluster of satellites, all over Canada. a whole bunch of outlets in the course of the West inventory its fort Garry tea and coffee. The coffee is roasted within the Bay's own flowers in Vancouver and Winnipeg. Hudson's Bay liquor, which the firm has bottled in Canada, Scotland, the West Indies and France, and its aspect blankets are also dealt with by way of its own wholesale retailers.

Oil introduced more Wealth

When oil become found out in Alberta it meant greater funds within the Hudson's Bay company kitty. The company owns oil and mineral rights to four,500,000 acres of prairie land. It had bought 2,500,000 acres of its holdings when, about 1910, it tumbled to the thought of conserving again oil rights.

The enterprise does not work the oil rights itself but has formed a partnership with the U. S. Consolidated Oil enterprise and the pair is raising derricks in the identify of the Hudson's Bay Oil and gas enterprise.

The Rupert's Land trading business, an additional Hudson's Bay offshoot, has the deeds to some unusual and extremely useful homes in its vaults. It holds the titles to all of the Bay outlets, to a seventy two-suite house house in Regina, Gorge Vale golf path in Victoria and the Prince Rupert links

in Edmonton, as well as 400,000 acres of land in the prairie provinces.

playing the prairie land booms recklessly, the business made tens of millions. In 1903 it. grew to become over 350,000 acres at greater than $5 an acre and 400,000 acres were bought in 1918 at stronger than $15. At one sale in Edmonton in 1912 the enterprise sold $5 hundreds of thousands value of property. The remaining 400,000 acres are being offered at the expense of 100,000 a yr and the Bay figures to be out of the land enterprise by using 1953 or 'fifty four.

Eagerness to cash in on the early land booms boomeranged on the Bay. When it got here to construct a latest branch keep in Winnipeg in 1926 it needed to pay $1 million for a web page. And the land it paid the cash for had been its personal beneath the long-established constitution and had been given it a 2d time within the contract of 1869.

The company's transformation from a fur change massive into a branch save massive changed into a herbal. As brassy boom cities sprang up across the enterprise forts these were step by step transformed into everyday shops, and out of these ultimately sprang these days's shops.

And the Wealth Went Out

As large because it is in the branch keep container, the Bay should have been greater. but, beneath Lord Strathcona, who turned into governor from 1899 to 1914, the Bay squandered the herbal lead it held over its opponents.

Strathcona neglected both the fur change and merchandising fields to play the land increase and to style His personal career in politics and the Canadian Pacific. It was he who prolonged the CPR to the Pacific Coast, although Hollywood has currently given the credit to Randolph Scott.

however Strathcona did all right. When he died in 1914 he become worth greater than $20 tens of millions. however the enterprise was in bad form on the merchandising entrance.

The late Douglas McKay, in his e-book, "The Honourable company," put it this way: "'Hiere became a transforming into resentment towards the business s lengthy record of having taken wealth from the nation while contributing not even the marvelous buildings which boards of change in ambitious cities regard as 'a stake within the community.' "

today the Bay's department stores are impressive enough. that you could journey the escalators through a maze of departments that allows you to promote you the rest from a pair of eyeglasses to a ton of coal. you could have your portrait Piken, your hair set or your footwear shined. The Winnipeg save bakes its own bread, makes its personal ice cream and pasteurizes its personal milk. It shops 20,000 fur coats each and every yr, does the city's greatest domestic coal company and should furnish any domicile from a house to a resort.

On a counter in the tiny publish shop at Windigo within the Ontario wilds a placard attracts the Indians to a counter piled excessive with an assortment of odds and ends. On the placard submit manager Ross Finch has scrawled a number of symbols of the Cree signal language. The symbols suggest: "Little cash—low priced."

In Vancouver and Winnipeg the Bay receives across the same message to the natives in big class splashed across full-web page newspaper advertisements and the assortment of odds and ends fills an entire discount basement.

The Governor and company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay have grew to become supersalesmen. ★

this is the first of two articles on the Hudson's Bay enterprise. The 2nd will appear in the next concern of Maclean's.