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| The Hudson Bay Company French Canada was not a land of great settlement, but fur-traders and adventurers did well there. The Coureurs-de-Bois went deep into the forest looking for new fur supplies and founding the trails that would later become North America's great inland highways.
Ironically, it was two of these tough French frontiersmen who brought the English into the far north. Le Sieur de Groseillers and his brother-in-law, Pierre Radisson, spent years exploring around the Hudson Bay. They repeatedly tried to persuade the government of Louis XIV, under Colbert, to take an interest in this far northern region, only to be rejected. When they brought their canoes, crammed with high quality furs, down to Quebec from the Hudson Bay area, they were simply fined for illegal trading. Rejected by the French authorities, Groseillers and Radisson turned to the English and led an expedition, in the name of Charles II, into the far north. "Mr Gooseberry" and "Mr Radish" were so successful that, in 1670, Charles II gave a charter to the "Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay". The king casually gave the company control of all the area drained by the rivers running into the Hudson Bay. It was 1,5 million square miles (4 million square kilometres), ten times the size of the British Isles. For London businessmen and politicians, including the Duke of York, Prince Rupert and half of the Cabinet, who invested in the Company, the profits were fabulous. Ships loaded with weapons, cheap jewellery and cooking utensils sailed into the Hudson Bay every June, just after the ice had melted. The goods were exchanged for furs, and the ships would leave for England before the Autumn ice re-appeared. |
© Shirley Burchill, Nigel Hughes, Richard Gale, Peter Price and Keith Woodall 2007 Footnote : As far as the Open Door team can ascertain the image shown on this page is in the Public Domain. |
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