Fort Ellice was a

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 ...

trading post that operated from 1794 to 1892. It was first established in February 1794 by John Sutherland on the

Qu'Appelle River The Qu'Appelle River is a river in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba that flows east from Lake Diefenbaker in south-western Saskatchewan to join the Assiniboine River in Manitoba, just s ...

about upstream from its mouth at the

Assiniboine River The Assiniboine River ( ; ) is a long river that runs through the prairies of Western Canada in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It is a tributary of the Red River. The Assiniboine is a typical meandering river with a single main channel embanked ...

, and known as the Qu'Appelle River Post until it was destroyed by the

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 a ...

in 1816. The post was rebuilt in 1817 on the south bank of the Assiniboine River near Beaver Creek, hence the post was called Beaver Creek until 1824 when it closed. In 1831, the post was reopened under the name Fort Ellice, named after Edward Ellice, a British merchant and an investor in the Hudson's Bay Company. Fort Ellice in turn gave its name to the Rural Municipality of Ellice in west-central Manitoba and to Ellice Avenue, a major arterial road in Winnipeg. It was an important fort, as it was a major stopping point on the

Carlton Trail The Carlton Trail was the primary land transportation route in the Canadian Northwest for most of the 19th century, connecting Fort Carlton to Edmonton along a line of intermediate places. It was part of a trail network that stretched from the ...

, which ran from the

Red River Colony The Red River Colony (or Selkirk Settlement), also known as Assiniboia, was a colonization project set up in 1811 by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, on of land in British North America. This land was granted to Douglas by the Hudson's Bay ...

Fort Edmonton Fort Edmonton (also named Edmonton House) was the name of a series of Trading post, trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) from 1795 to 1914, all of which were located on the north banks of the North Saskatchewan River in what is now ce ...

. (The section leading from Upper Fort Garry to this district was commonly known as the Fort Ellice Trail.) A second more elaborate structure was built in 1862 by the HBC, and in 1873, replaced Fort Pelly as the headquarters for the Swan River District. But its economic life was short-lived as the Company relinquished control of Rupert's Land with the 1870 Deed of Surrender. This deed transferred many HBC rights to the new Canadian national government. The fort had one more important role to play in history; it acted as a staging point for part of the

North-West Mounted Police The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian paramilitary police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory to ...

(NWMP) force that started at Fort Dufferin and headed west in 1874 to establish law and order in the future provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. The fort acted as an NWMP post beginning in 1875. In 1890, the Hudson's Bay Company sold the property to Thomas V. Wheeler, who conducted private business there until 1892. The property where both forts were located is currently owned and managed by the

Nature Conservancy of Canada The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) is a private, non-profit, charitable nature conservation and restoration organisation based in Canada. Since its founding in 1962, the organisation and its partners have protected of land and water acro ...

References

External links

*
''Manitoba Community Profiles''

''History in Winnipeg Street Names'' from the Manitoba Historical Society

* Google trekker - virtual hike of Fort Ellice property https://www.google.com/maps/@50.4027067,-101.2869901,3a,50.4y,283.13h,76.29t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUF2N0E_pMD23ln2H07fipw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ellice Hudson's Bay Company forts in Manitoba North-West Mounted Police forts Fort Ellice Fort Ellice