The Hudson’s Bay Co. charter

The sale of the Hudson’s Bay Co. charter, or royal proclamation, has been very much in the news in recent months.

That’s because the venerable old company has gone bankrupt through the negligence and greed of its governor Richard Baker.

In a bankruptcy, everything a company owns gets sold and the proceeds are used to pay off the debts to the company’s creditors. That’s what is happening with the assets of the Hudson’s Bay Co.

The royal proclamation — which founded the company — is one of those assets.

When it was announced that the charter would be sold, concerns were raised that it might be sold to a foreign buyer — an institution or wealthy collector — and leave Canada.

People interested in Canada’s history said such an important artifact should not leave the country, and that the company should simply give it to a Canadian institution, such as the Canadian Museum of History.

Why couldn’t that happen? Because in a bankruptcy, the company’s assets are no longer in the company’s control. They pass to a bankruptcy trustee. The trustee has a fiduciary duty to the creditors (the people the company owes money to) to get the best price possible for the asset by selling it.

But why all the fuss about this document? Why is it important?

Young people in the North today may not know what the Hudson’s Bay Co. is or was, or how important it was in the lives of their parents or grandparents.

The stores that are visible in almost every northern community in Canada today are owned by The North West Company, but they don’t operate under that name. Instead, they use the name Northern for 122 stores in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Labrador and Yukon, and five other provinces; and NorthMart for six stores including those in Iqaluit, Goose Bay, Hay River and Inuvik.

But The North West Company — maybe I should say this North West Company — and Northern and NorthMart have only been in existence since 1990. Before that, all those stores in the North had a different sign above the door. It read “Hudson’s Bay Company, Incorporated 2nd May 1670.”

That’s a long time ago. What happened in 1670?

The beginning was actually two years earlier. Two Frenchmen, Radisson and Groseilliers (whom the English called Mr. Gooseberry) had convinced a group of extremely rich men from the king’s inner circle to fund a fur-trading venture to the new world where fabulous wealth awaited them.

Among those wealthy men was the king’s first cousin, Prince Rupert.

Prince Rupert had been born in Prague (now a city in the Czech Republic), the son of Frederick V and Elizabeth of Bohemia. He held numerous royal titles. He arrived in England at the age of 17 and became a soldier. But he was also an artist and a scientist.

He was banished from England when his uncle Charles I was beheaded but returned when Charles II took the throne.

In 1668, the group of investors he headed sent a ship, the Nonsuch, to Hudson Bay where it wintered, returning the following year loaded with furs.

The next year, on May 2, King Charles II granted a Royal Charter to Prince Rupert and his investors over what came to be known as Rupert’s Land.

It gave them exclusive rights for “sole trade and commerce” over a vast territory — the drainage basin of all the rivers flowing into Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay.

Neither the king nor anyone else in England understood at the time the full geographical scope of the land grant.

Eventually, as exploration and map-making proceeded it became apparent that it covered almost four million square kilometres, over 40 per cent of the land mass of what would later be known as Canada.

It included northern Ontario and northern Quebec, all of Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, and parts of what would become the American states of North Dakota and Minnesota.

It also included most of what is now the Kivalliq Region and southwestern Baffin Island (Qikiqtaaluk) in Nunavut, because their rivers drained into Foxe Basin, part of Hudson Bay.

The company was incorporated as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson’s Bay.

The charter is handwritten on parchment and is approximately 7,000 words long. It is beautifully decorated with illustrated borders on each side of the page and at the top. At the top left is an illustration of King Charles II. His royal seal certifies the authenticity of the document.

A little over 100 years after the Hudson’s Bay Co., was given its monopoly, competition appeared — The North West Company, with its headquarters in Montreal.

Formed by immigrant Highland Scots who worked with French-Canadian voyageurs and Indigenous people, the upstart company expanded rapidly inland and to the west, while the Hudson’s Bay Co. stuck to its posts on the shores of Hudson Bay.

By 1790, the Norwesters led the fur trade. Then Hudson’s Bay Co. fought back. In 1821, the two companies merged under the Hudson’s Bay Co. banner.

In 1867, the British North America Act proclaimed the new nation of Canada. Canada negotiated the transfer of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Co. to the British government, which then transferred the land to Canada.

The Hudson’s Bay Co. received 300,000 British pounds as compensation.

Hudson’s Bay Co. grew into a national company with many divisions. It was often referred to simply as The Bay.

It is hard, today, to understand the power and scope of the Hudson’s Bay Co. The company even had its own flag and coat of arms. The flag was used as both the flag of Rupert’s Land and the company flag, until Canada acquired Rupert’s Land in 1867.

It is the only company in North America in which the chairman is referred to as governor.

The first Hudson’s Bay Co. posts did not open in what is now Nunavut until 1911. It eventually wiped out all its serious competitors and dominated commerce in the North until the advent of co-operatives.

Years ago, the Hudson’s Bay Co. had a slogan it used in advertising: “It’s hard not to think of The Bay.”

In the North, that was especially true.

In Inuktitut, a Hudson’s Bay Co. store was called simply “niuviqvik” — “the store.”

The company and its employees were “niuviqtikkut,” or “Companikkut.”

To non-Inuit northerners, it was The Bay. Writers on the North often joked that Hudson’s Bay Co. meant “Here Before Christ,” because in most communities The Bay was there before missionaries arrived.

In 1987, investors and employees purchased Hudson’s Bay Co.’s Northern Stores Division, and in 1990 the new enterprise adopted The North West Company as its formal name, a homage to its fur trade roots.

Taissumani is an occasional column that recalls events of historical interest. Kenn Harper is a historian and writer who lived in the Arctic for over 50 years. He is the author of Give Me Winter, Give Me Dogs: Knud Rasmussen and the Fifth Thule Expedition, and Thou Shalt Do No Murder, among other books. Feedback? Send your comments and questions to kennharper@hotmail.com.