Policing the Plains | Page 3

1920, we, in the West, celebrated with enthusiasm
the birthday anniversary of the Hudson's Bay Company, which has
attained to the ripe old age of 250 years. Yet the eye of this ancient
organization is not dimmed by time, nor does its power show signs of
impairment. As it is around this old and honourable commercial and
colonizing concern that the early history of Western Canada principally
revolves, a few paragraphs on this subject seem to be necessary as we
begin our story. We must have proper historical setting for the entrance
of our famous police force on the stage of Western Canadian history.
About the end of the first decade of the seventeenth century, Henry
Hudson, the intrepid navigator who was looking for a North-West
Passage by water through the North-American Continent to the
Western Sea, discovered the great Bay which bears his name to this day.
Marooned by a mutinous crew, he paid for the discovery with his life,
after the manner of many pathfinders, but he had unlocked a new
Empire for the human family. Then for years there was silence around
the Bay which Hudson had opened at such great cost to himself.
Away in the East, following the early explorations along the banks of
the St. Lawrence in old Canada, adventurous hunters and trappers
began to push their way westward and northward, past the Great Lakes
to the prairie land beyond. This was about the middle of the
seventeenth century, and at that period the New World was full of
opportunity for the daring who saw visions beyond the sky-line.
And so it came to pass about half a century after Hudson's time that two
French adventurers, Radisson and Groseilliers, reaching out from the St.
Lawrence to the wide north-west, came into contact with Indian tribes

who told about the great bay to the north and the vast riches of the
region in furs and skins. These adventurers went to see for themselves
and they found that the half had not been told. And because, despite
many theories, no one has ever discovered a way to carry on a big
enterprise without capital, these hardy pioneers returned to the East and
endeavoured to organize a trading company from amongst their French
compatriots. But the enthusiasm of the men who had seen could not
awaken response in the men who had not seen. The faculty of faith was
not very highly developed in these French habitants by the St.
Lawrence. But the zeal of Radisson and Groseilliers was unquenchable.
They tried Boston in vain, and then betook themselves to France, where
they were not any more successful, except that they got a letter of
introduction to some men of leading in England. The Englishman
generally loves a sporting chance for exploration and discovery, and so
Prince Rupert, more or less a soldier of fortune who had lent his name
and his sword to almost anything that offered a possibility of adventure
or substance, took up the matter of the fur trade and was instrumental in
sending out vessels with Radisson and Groseilliers to prospect on the
shores of Hudson Bay. Once again the men who went and saw came
back, not only with tales of an El Dorado in fur, but with the furs
themselves, and the dashing Prince forthwith secured from the
easy-going Charles II a monopolistic charter to trade and generally to
control the whole vast region drained by rivers that emptied into
Hudson Bay. The territory thus granted, with more added later by
licences, extended generally speaking from the Great Lakes to the
Pacific and from mid-continent to the North Pole. It was as large as half
a dozen European Kingdoms and has become one of the greatest
adjuncts of the British Empire, but King Charles did not know nor care
much more about it than the French king who later on gave up Canada
with a light heart, saying it was only "a few hundred acres of snow."
It is not our duty in this book to follow the fortunes of "the Governor
and Company of the Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay"
as the Royal Charter described this little band of less than a score of
men to whom had been handed over the control of half a continent. It is
enough to say that the Hudson's Bay Company, as the popular habit of
shortening long titles rendered it, held this vast region for two whole

centuries. During that time the immense resources of the country
tempted others to disregard the monopolistic provisions of the Royal
Charter and to venture in upon forbidden ground. Companies such as
the North-West Fur Company, formed by the Scottish merchants of
Montreal, rushed to secure part of the rich harvest in trade that was
being reaped