North West Company
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The North West Company was a fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in the regions that later became Western Canada and Northwestern Ontario. With great wealth at stake, tensions between the companies increased to the point where several minor armed skirmishes broke out, and the two companies were forced by the British government to merge.
Company coat of arms
Following the 1787 death of Benjamin Frobisher, Simon McTavish dominated the company, until his own death in 1804. His nephew William McGilivray ran the company, until the Hudson's Bay Company merger of 1821.
Hudson's Bay Company
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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.
Trading at an HBC trading post
Depiction of the capture of York Factory by French forces in 1694
Depiction of an Indigenous woman wearing a Hudson's Bay point blanket, c. 1850
Depiction of the Battle of Seven Oaks, a violent confrontation between HBC and the North West Company during the Pemmican War