The Hudson's Bay Company is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the largest and oldest corporation in Canada. As of December 2024, HBC has a Canadian division responsible for the namesake Hudson's Bay department stores, and an American division that includes the full-line luxury stores Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue; the off-price department stores Neiman Marcus Last Call and Saks Off 5th; and the home furnishings website Horchow. It also owns or manages approximately 3.7 million square metres of gross leasable real estate through its HBC Properties and Investments business unit.
Northern Canada, colloquially the North or the Territories, is the vast northernmost region of Canada, variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to the three territories of Canada: Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. This area covers about 48 per cent of Canada's total land area, but has less than 0.5 per cent of Canada's population.
Rupert's Land, or Prince Rupert's Land, was a territory in British North America which comprised the Hudson Bay drainage basin. The right to "sole trade and commerce" over Rupert's Land was granted to Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), based at York Factory, effectively giving that company a commercial monopoly over the area. The territory operated for 200 years from 1670 to 1870. Its namesake was Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who was a nephew of King Charles I and the first governor of HBC. In December 1821, the HBC monopoly was extended from Rupert's Land to the Pacific coast.
The Red River Colony, also known as Assiniboia, was a colonization project set up in 1811 by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, on 300,000 square kilometres (120,000 sq mi) of land in British North America. This land was granted to Douglas by the Hudson's Bay Company in the Selkirk Concession. It included portions of Rupert's Land, or the watershed of Hudson Bay, bounded on the north by the line of 52° N latitude roughly from the Assiniboine River east to Lake Winnipegosis. It then formed a line of 52° 30′ N latitude from Lake Winnipegosis to Lake Winnipeg, and by the Winnipeg River, Lake of the Woods and Rainy River.
The Manitoba Act, 1870 is an act of the Parliament of Canada, and part of the Constitution of Canada, that provided for the admission of Manitoba as the fifth province of Canada.
The vastness of Canada's Northwest Territories meant that for much of its history it was divided into several districts for ease of administration. The number and size of these territorial districts varied as other provinces and territories of Canada were created and expanded. The districts of the Northwest Territories were abolished in 1999 with the creation of the Nunavut territory and the contraction of the Northwest Territories to its current size.
New Caledonia was a fur-trading district of the Hudson's Bay Company that comprised the territory of the north-central portions of present-day British Columbia, Canada. Though not a British colony, New Caledonia was part of the British claim to North America. Its administrative centre was Fort St. James. The rest of what is now mainland British Columbia was called the Columbia Department by the British, and the Oregon Country by the Americans. Even before the partition of the Columbia Department by the Oregon Treaty in 1846, New Caledonia was often used to describe anywhere on the mainland not in the Columbia Department, such as Fort Langley in the Fraser Valley.
The Stickeen Territories, also colloquially rendered as Stickeen Territory,Stikine Territory, and Stikeen Territory, was a territory of British North America whose brief existence began July 19, 1862, and concluded July of the following year. The region was split from the North-Western Territory in the wake of the Stikine Gold Rush. The initial strike attracted large numbers of miners — mostly American — to the region; by detaching the region from the exclusive trade zone of the Hudson's Bay Company, British authorities were able to impose tariffs and licences on the speculators. The new territory, named after the Stikine River, was under the responsibility of the Governor of the Colony of British Columbia, James Douglas, who was appointed "Administrator of the Stickeen Territories" and under British law, within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
The Columbia District was a fur-trading district in the Pacific Northwest region of North America, in both the United States and British North America in the 19th century. Much of its territory overlapped with the temporarily jointly occupied and disputed Oregon Country. It was explored by the North West Company between 1793 and 1811 and established as an operating fur-trading district around 1810. The North West Company was absorbed into the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1821, under which the Columbia District became known as the Columbia Department. It was considered part of British North America and later became the brief first Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866) with the subsequent merger with the Colony of Vancouver Island (1849–1866) to form a larger second short-lived Colony of British Columbia (1866–1871). After protracted negotiations with British and Canadian authorities, the newly reorganized Province of British Columbia joined in 1871 with the new Canadian confederation of 1867 further east, as the western-most province of the now trans-continental Dominion of Canada. The Oregon Treaty of June 1846, signed in Washington, D.C., by the United States and the United Kingdom, marked the effective end of the old Hudson's Bay Company's jurisdiction of the former western Columbia District / Department on the Pacific coast, although the HBC still continues a mercantile commercial business into the 21st century.
The British Arctic Territories were a region of British North America, composed of islands to the north of continental North America. They are now known as the Arctic Archipelago.
The Colony of Vancouver Island, officially known as the Island of Vancouver and its Dependencies, was a Crown colony of British North America from 1849 to 1866, after which it was united with the mainland to form the Colony of British Columbia. The united colony joined Canadian Confederation, thus becoming part of Canada, in 1871. The colony comprised Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands of the Strait of Georgia.
The history of the Northwest Territories covers the period from thousands of years ago to the present day. Prior to European colonization, the lands that encompass present-day Northwest Territories were inhabited for millennia by several First Nations. European explorers and fur traders began to explore the region since the late-16th century. By the 17th century, the British laid claim to both the North-Western Territory and Rupert's Land; and granted the Hudson's Bay Company a commercial fur trade monopoly over the latter region.
The history of post-confederation Canada began on July 1, 1867, when the British North American colonies of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were united to form a single Dominion within the British Empire. Upon Confederation, the United Province of Canada was immediately split into the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The colonies of Prince Edward Island and British Columbia joined shortly after, and Canada acquired the vast expanse of the continent controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company, which was eventually divided into new territories and provinces. Canada evolved into a fully sovereign state by 1982.
The Treaty of Saint Petersburg of 1825 or the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1825, officially the Convention Concerning the Limits of Their Respective Possessions on the Northwest Coast of America and the Navigation of the Pacific Ocean, defined the boundaries between Russian America and British claims and possessions of the Pacific Coast, and the later Yukon and Arctic regions of North America. It was agreed that along the coast at the southern tip of Prince of Wales island northward to the 56 parallel, with the island wholly belonging to Russia, then to 10 marine leagues (56 km) inland going north and west to the 141st meridian west and then north to the "Frozen Ocean", the current Alaska/Canadian Yukon boundary, would be the boundary. The coastal limit had, the year before, been established as the limit of overlapping American claims in the parallel Russo-American Treaty of 1824. The Russian sphere in the region was later sold to the United States, eventually becoming the State of Alaska, while the British claim, along the coast to the south of parallel 54°40′ is now the coast of the Canadian province of British Columbia, and for inland regions it defined the western limit of what became the modern day Canadian territory of Yukon. It also defined associated rights and obligations concerning waters and ports in the region. The treaty, in establishing a vague division of coastal Russian interests and inland British interests between 56 and 60 degrees north latitude, led to conflicting interpretations of the meaning of the treaty's wording which later manifested in the Alaska Boundary Dispute between the United States on the one hand, and Canada on the other.
Fort Stikine was a fur trade post and fortification in what is now the Alaska Panhandle, at the site of the present-day of Wrangell, Alaska. Originally built as the Redoubt San Dionisio or Redoubt Saint Dionysius in 1834, the site was transferred to the British-owned Hudson's Bay Company as part of a lease signed in the region in 1838, and renamed Fort Stikine when turned into a Hudson's Bay Company post in 1839. The post was closed and decommissioned by 1843 but the name remained for the large village of the Stikine people which had grown around it, becoming known as Shakesville in reference to its ruling Chief Shakes by the 1860s. With the Alaska Purchase of 1867, the fortification became occupied by the US Army and was renamed Fort Wrangel, a reference to Baron von Wrangel, who had been Governor of Russian America when the fort was founded. The site today is now part of the city of Wrangell.
Land is owned in Canada by governments, Indigenous groups, corporations, and individuals. Canada is the second-largest country in the world by area; with 9,093,507 km2 (3,511,023 sq mi) of land.
A number of states and polities formerly claimed colonies and territories in Canada prior to the evolution of the current provinces and territories under the federal system. North America prior to colonization was occupied by a variety of indigenous groups consisting of band societies typical of the sparsely populated North, to loose confederacies made up of numerous hunting bands from a variety of ethnic groups, to more structured confederacies of sedentary farming villages, to stratified hereditary structures centred on a fishing economy. The colonization of Canada by Europeans began in the 10th century, when Norsemen explored and, ultimately unsuccessfully, attempted to settle areas of the northeastern fringes of North America. Early permanent European settlements in what is now Canada included the late 16th and 17th century French colonies of Acadia and Canada, the English colonies of Newfoundland (island) and Rupert's Land, the Scottish colonies of Nova Scotia and Port Royal.
RAC–HBC Agreement was a series of protocols signed by the Russian-American Company (RAC) and the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1839 and remained active until 1865.
