David Thompson was an Anglo-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and cartographer, known to some native people as "Koo-Koo-Sint" or "the Stargazer". Over Thompson's career, he travelled 90,000 kilometres (56,000 mi) across North America, mapping 4.9 million square kilometres of the continent along the way. For this historic feat, Thompson has been described as the "greatest practical land geographer that the world has produced".
The Hudson's Bay Company is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, it became the largest and oldest corporation in Canada, and now owns and operates retail stores across the country. The company's namesake business division is Hudson's Bay, commonly referred to as The Bay.
Hudson Bay, sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada with a surface area of 1,230,000 km2 (470,000 sq mi). It is located north of Ontario, west of Quebec, northeast of Manitoba and southeast of Nunavut, but politically entirely part of Nunavut. It is an inland marginal sea of both the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. It drains a very large area, about 3,861,400 km2 (1,490,900 sq mi), that includes parts of southeastern Nunavut, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, all of Manitoba, and parts of the U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. Hudson Bay's southern arm is called James Bay.
Fort Garry, also known as Upper Fort Garry, was a Hudson's Bay Company trading post at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in what is now downtown Winnipeg.
Churchill is a town in northern Manitoba, Canada, on the west shore of Hudson Bay, roughly 140 km (87 mi) from the Manitoba–Nunavut border. It is most famous for the many polar bears that move toward the shore from inland in the autumn, leading to the nickname "Polar Bear Capital of the World," and to the benefit of its burgeoning tourism industry.
Samuel Hearne was an English explorer, fur-trader, author and naturalist.
York Factory was a settlement and Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) factory located on the southwestern shore of Hudson Bay in northeastern Manitoba, Canada, at the mouth of the Hayes River, approximately 200 kilometres (120 mi) south-southeast of Churchill. York Factory was one of the first fur-trading posts established by the HBC, built in 1684 and used in that business for more than 270 years. The settlement was headquarters of the HBC's Northern Department from 1821 to 1873. The complex was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1936.
Sir George Simpson was a Scottish explorer and colonial governor of the Hudson's Bay Company during the period of its greatest power. From 1820 to 1860, he was in practice, if not in law, the British viceroy for the whole of Rupert's Land, an enormous territory of 3.9 millions square kilometers corresponding to nearly forty percent of modern-day Canada.
James Knight was an English director of the Hudson's Bay Company and an explorer who disappeared on an expedition to find the Northwest Passage.
Cumberland House is a community in Census Division No. 18 in northeast Saskatchewan, Canada on the Saskatchewan River. It is the oldest community in Saskatchewan and has a population of about 2,000 people. Cumberland House Provincial Park, which provides tours of an 1890s powder house built by the Hudson's Bay Company, is located nearby.
Prince of Wales is the title traditionally given to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom.
Fort Carlton was a Hudson's Bay Company fur trading post from 1795 until 1885. It was located along the North Saskatchewan River not far from Duck Lake. It is in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and was rebuilt by the government of Saskatchewan as a feature of a provincial historic park and can be visited today. It is about 65 kilometres (40 mi) north of Saskatoon.
Fort Langley National Historic Site, commonly shortened to Fort Langley, is a former fur trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company in the community of Fort Langley of Langley, British Columbia, Canada. The national historic site sits above the banks of the Bedford Channel across McMillan Island. The national historic site contains a visitor centre and a largely reconstructed trading post that contains ten structures surrounded by wooden palisades.
Philip Turnor was a surveyor and cartographer for the Hudson's Bay Company.
The Hudson Bay expedition was a series of military raids on the fur trading outposts and fortifications of the British Hudson's Bay Company on the shores of Hudson Bay by a French Royal Navy squadron under the command of the Comte de Lapérouse. Setting sail from Cap-Français, Saint-Domingue in 1782, the expedition was part of a series of globe-spanning naval conflicts between France and Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War.
Asleep by the frozen sea is a phrase coined by Joseph Robson to describe the policy of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) from its foundation in 1670 until the establishment of its first inland post in 1774. Unlike the French who sent Coureurs des bois inland to trade, the HBC built posts on Hudson Bay and waited for the Indians to bring furs to them. The decision to abandon this policy and move inland gradually turned the HBC into an informal government for western Canada and led ultimately to the confederation of western and eastern Canada.
The Pemmican War was a series of armed confrontations during the North American fur trade between the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and the North West Company (NWC) in the years following the establishment of the Red River Colony in 1812 by Lord Selkirk. It ended in 1821 when the NWC merged with the HBC.
James Isham (1716–1761) was chief factor (master) at both York Factory and Fort Prince of Wales in Canada during the mid-1700s. He kept detailed journals that described life in the region, including flora and fauna that were unknown to people in England at that time. His journals are important historical documents and he is well known to scholars of the fur trade in Canada during the early years of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC).
Moses Norton was a Hudson's Bay Company administrator who was chief factor of Fort Prince of Wales from 1762 until his death in 1773. A controversial figure throughout his life, he notably commissioned explorer Samuel Hearne's three expeditions in 1769–1772, which led to the first European discovery of the Coppermine River and the northern coast of Canada.
