by D. Vogt

Created on: January 10, 2010

Between 1779 and 1821, the Hudson's Bay Company - usually seen as synonymous with the fur trade in Canada - was actually threatened by the serious competition of an upstart rival, the North West Company. Unlike the Hudson's Bay, the Northwest Company (NWC) was actually Canadian, based in Montreal, and, for a brief time, it looked as though it might be the first to succeed in breaking "the Bay's" virtual monopoly on beaver fur in what is now western Canada.

The North West Company generally captures little attention today. Its ultimately successful larger rival, the Hudson's Bay Company, would eventually absorb it, and still survives today in the form of the "Bay" chain of Canadian department stores. Even today's historians, however, tend to be more attracted to the Bay than to the North West Company. The North West men left relatively few records, and most of those they did write have been lost. The Hudson's Bay trading posts, by contrast, were required to keep meticulous and regular journals, most of which can still be found at the company's archives, now in Manitoba. So it's not surprising that historians have followed loyally behind the largest documentary sources.

Nevertheless, the North West Company played a fascinating and vital role in the Canadian fur trade. When it was formed as a consortium for Montreal fur merchants in 1779, the Hudson's Bay Company was already a century old. The British-owned corporation operated across most of present-day Canada, with its far-flung network of trading posts spreading across the prairies and touching up against the Rocky Mountains. But the Hudson's Bay Company was a monopoly facing new competition it simply wasn't used to. Within fifty years, it would be set upon from three directions: the North West Company from Montreal, but also American traders moving up from the south and Russian traders plying their trade along the Pacific coast. However, the company's grand monopoly over Rupert's Land - today the prairie provinces and the Arctic teritories - was the bedrock of its lucrative fur industry.

Challenging such a large force would not be easy for the new North West Company. It would, decided founding partners Benjamin Frobisher and Joseph and Simon McTavish, have to do so by pushing farther west than the Hudson's Bay Company had ever gone before. Its "wintering partners" would live in the country year-round, and gradually push further and further into Hudson's Bay territory. In 1787, for example, the Company took

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