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North West Company
The North West Company was a Fur trade in Canada, Canadian fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in the regions that later became Western Canada and Northwestern Ontario. With great wealth at stake, tensions between the companies increased to the point where several minor armed skirmishes broke out, and the two companies were forced by the British government to merge. Before the Company After the French landed in Quebec in 1608, independent French-Canadian traders commonly known as spread out and built a fur trade empire in the St. Lawrence River, St. Lawrence basin. The French competed with the Dutch (from 1614) and English (1664) in New York and the English in Hudson Bay (1670). Unlike the French who traveled into the northern interior and traded with First Nations in their camps and villages, the English made bases at trading posts on Hudson Bay, inviting the indigenous people t ...
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Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the namesake Hudson's Bay (department store), Hudson's Bay department stores (colloquially The Bay), and also owns or manages approximately of gross leasable real estate through its HBC Properties and Investments business unit. HBC previously owned the full-line Saks Fifth Avenue and off-price Saks Off 5th in the United States, which were spun-off into the Saks Global holding company in 2024. After incorporation by royal charter issued in 1670 by Charles II of England, King Charles II, the company was granted a right of "sole trade and commerce" over an expansive area of land known as Rupert's Land, comprising much of the Hudson Bay drainage basin. This right gave the company a monopoly, commercial monopoly over that area. The HBC functioned ...
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Pierre Gaultier De Varennes, Sieur De La Vérendrye
Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye (17 November 1685 – 5 December 1749) was a French Canadian military officer, fur trader, and explorer. In the 1730s, he and his four sons explored the area west of Lake Superior and established trading posts there. They were part of a process that added Western Canada to the original New France territory that was centred along the Saint Lawrence basin. He was the first known European to reach present-day North Dakota and the upper Missouri River in the United States. In the 1740s, two of his sons crossed the prairie as far as present-day Wyoming, United States, and were the first Europeans to see the Rocky Mountains north of New Mexico. Early life Born in Trois-Rivières, New France, Pierre was the eldest son of René Gaultier de Varennes, who came to Canada as a soldier in 1665, and Marie, the daughter of Pierre Boucher, the first Governor of Trois-Rivières. The Gaultier family were minor nobility or landowners ...
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Lake Superior
Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface areaThe Caspian Sea is the largest lake, but is saline, not freshwater. Lake Michigan–Huron has a larger combined surface area than Superior, but is normally considered two separate lakes. and the third-largest freshwater lake by volume, holding 10% of the fresh water in all of the world's rivers and lakes. Located in central North America, it is the northernmost and westernmost of the Great Lakes of North America, straddling the Canada–United States border with the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and east and the U.S. states of Minnesota to the west and Michigan and Wisconsin to the south. It drains into Lake Huron via St. Marys River, then through the lower Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence River and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean. Name The Ojibwe name for the lake is ''gichi-gami'' (in syllabics: , pronounced ''gitchi-gami'' or ''kitchi-gami'' in different dialects), meaning "great sea". ...
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Grand Portage
Grand Portage National Monument is a United States National Monument located on the north shore of Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota that preserves a vital center of fur trade activity and Anishinaabeg Ojibwe heritage. The area became one of the British Empire's four main fur trading centers in North America, along with Fort Niagara, Fort Detroit, and Michilimackinac. The ''Grand Portage'' is an (2720 rod) footpath which bypasses a set of waterfalls and rapids on the last of the Pigeon River before it flows into Lake Superior. This path is part of the historic trade route of the French-Canadian voyageurs and coureur des bois between their wintering grounds and their depots to the east. Composed of the Pigeon River and other strategic interior streams, lakes, and portages, this route was of enormous importance in pre-industrial times. It provided quick water access from Canada's settled areas and Atlantic ports to the fur-rich Rupert's Land and the North-Western Terr ...
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Alexander Mackenzie (explorer)
Sir Alexander Mackenzie ( – 12 March 1820) was a Scottish explorer and fur trader known for accomplishing the first crossing of North America north of Mexico by a European in 1793. The Mackenzie River and Mount Sir Alexander are named after him. As a leading member of the North West Company, he aspired to extend the Company's operations into western Canada and selling those furs in China. His hopes thus were intrusions on the monopoly positions of both the Hudson's Bay Company and the East India Company. Early life Mackenzie was born in Stornoway in Isle of Lewis, Lewis. He was the third of the four children born to Kenneth 'Corc' Mackenzie (1731–1780) and his wife Isabella MacIver, from another prominent mercantile family in Stornoway. When only 14 years old, Mackenzie's father served as an Ensign (rank), ensign to protect Stornoway during the Jacobite rising of 1745. He later became a merchant and held the Tacksman, tack of Melbost; his grandfather being a younger brot ...
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Edward Ellice (merchant)
Edward Ellice the Elder (27 September 1783 – 17 September 1863), known in his time as the "Bear", was an English merchant and politician. He was a Director of the Hudson's Bay Company and a prime mover behind the Reform Bill of 1832. Biography Ellice was born on 27 September 1783 in London, the son of Alexander Ellice and Ann Russell. In 1795, his father purchased the Seigneury of Villechauve in Canada from Michel Chartier de Lotbinière, Marquis de Lotbinière. His younger brother was General Robert Ellice. He was educated at Winchester School and at Marischal College, Aberdeen. He became a partner in the firm of ''Phyn, Ellices and Inglis'', which had become interested in the XY Company in Canada. He was sent to Canada in 1803, and in 1804 became a party to the union of the XY and North West Companies. He became a partner in the North West Company, and during the struggle with Lord Selkirk he played an important part. He engaged in the Canada fur trade from 1803, ...
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Peter Pond
Peter Pond (January 18, 1739 – 1807) was an American explorer, cartographer, merchant and soldier who was a founding member of the North West Company and the Beaver Club. Though he was born and died in Milford, Connecticut, most of his life was spent in northwestern North America, on the upper Mississippi and in western Canada. Early life Pond, born on in January 18, 1739 at Milford, Connecticut, began his fur trading career with his father out of Fort Detroit. He traded throughout the regions south of Lake Superior and west of Lake Michigan, which later became Minnesota and Wisconsin. During the French and Indian War, Pond enlisted in the Connecticut Regiment, a provincial infantry unit. A narrative of his early life was published in the 1933 book ''Five Fur Traders of the Northwest''. Through his business he became acquainted with Alexander Henry the elder, Simon McTavish and the brothers Thomas, Benjamin and Joseph Frobisher. They would be the founders of the ...
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Monopoly
A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek and ) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic Competition (economics), competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller's marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit. The verb ''monopolise'' or ''monopolize'' refers to the ''process'' by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude competitors. In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge Monopoly price, overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises. Although monopolies may be big businesses, size is not a characteristic of a monopoly. A small business may still have the power to raise prices in a small industry (or market). A monopoly may als ...
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James McGill
James McGill (6 October 1744 – 19 December 1813) was a Scottish-born businessman, politician, slaveholder, and philanthropist best known for being the founder of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada for Montreal West and appointed to the Executive Council of Lower Canada in 1792. He was an honorary lieutenant colonel of the 1st Battalion, Montreal Militia, a predecessor unit of The Canadian Grenadier Guards. He was also a prominent member of the Château Clique and one of the original founding members of the Beaver Club. His summer home stood within the Golden Square Mile. McGill was a highly influential and record breaking trader (specifically with furs) within Canada during his life, with it being argued that McGill was "the richest man in Montreal" at the time of his death by his business contemporaries in reflection. Two prime examples of McGill's status as a record-breaking and influential trader are: 1) McG ...
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Alexander Henry The Elder
Alexander Henry 'The Elder', in French: ''Alexandre Henri Le Vieux'' (August 1739 – 4 April 1824) was an American-born explorer, author, merchant who settled in Quebec following the Conquest of New France (1758–1760), Conquest of New France and was a partner in the North West Company and a founding member and vice-chairman of the Beaver Club. From 1763 to 1764, he lived and hunted with Wawatam of the Ojibwe, who had adopted him as a brother. "Blessed with as many lives as a cat", he recounted his time with the Ojibwe and subsequent explorations in his ''Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories between the years 1760 and 1776'' (published in New York City in 1809), which he dedicated to his friend Sir Joseph Banks. The book is considered an adventure classic and one of the best descriptions of Native Americans in the United States, Native Indian life at this time. An "easy and dignified" raconteur, in 1776 Henry was invited to give an account of his journeys ...
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Isaac Todd
Isaac Todd ( c. 1742 – 1819) was one of Montreal's most prominent merchants following the British Conquest of New France and a founding member of the Beaver Club at Montreal and the Canada Club at London. He was one of the earliest partners in the North West Company before it was formalized, but was better known for his partnership with James McGill. In 1812, he purchased Buncrana Castle in Inishowen, County Donegal, which he left to his nephew, William Thornton-Todd, the younger brother of Andrew Todd. Early life Isaac Todd was born around 1742 into a wealthy merchant family at Coleraine, County Londonderry, in Ulster, the son of John Todd and his wife Elizabeth Patterson. Elizabeth was a native of Fox Hall, near Ramelton, in County Donegal, also in Ulster. The Todds, established members of the local Protestant gentry, had been prospering at Coleraine since at least 1630 and held several valuable land leases from the Earls of Antrim. Isaac Todd spent his early manhood as ...
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