Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site of Canada

Cultural Treasures

The Fur Trade

© Parks Canada

The fur trade in Canada began off our eastern coast when the first European fishermen traded their personal belongings for furs from the Aboriginal people on shore. From this modest start, the fur trade developed rapidly and culminated in the late 1700s with two giant firms, the Montréal-based North West Company and the London-headquartered Hudson's Bay Company.

At first, these two companies competed for the fur-laden territory up to the foot of the Rockies. Eventually, this territory extended to the Pacific Ocean throughout the North West Company's successful "Columbia Enterprise" expedition. The merger of these two companies in 1821 saw the new Hudson's Bay Company holding sway over much of present-day Canada.

To many living in this century, the era of the fur trade is fondly imagined as a picturesque time of romance and adventure, a time of heroes struggling in a vast, often hostile, wilderness. From New France's coureurs de bois to the voyageurs of the North West Company and the men who rowed the Hudson's Bay Company's large, flat-bottomed York boats, the era of fur brigades and trading posts produced many courageous men. Radisson and Groseilliers, La Vérendrye, Anthony Henday, the Frobishers, Peter Pond, Alexander Mackenzie and David Thompson were just a few. Many of today's place names originate from the era of the fur trade: cities and towns such as Edmonton and Churchill; rivers such as the Fraser, Mackenzie, and Thompson; and places such as Portage la Prairie, Howse Pass, and, of course, Rocky Mountain House.

The fur trade was, above all, an economic enterprise. The fur trade was a successful business. It depended on the mutually beneficial relationship between a demand in Europe for furs (especially the beaver) and the corresponding demand for European goods in Canada. For as long as Europeans demanded furs in great quantity, the trade in North America expanded and prospered. Many men made their fortunes in the fur trade. Montréal became the centre of the Canadian-based trade, establishing itself (through the wealth of this trade) as the economic centre of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes area.

The potential wealth to be made in the North American fur-trade business attracted the attention of the European empires. At one time, the Dutch, English and French vied for control of the northeast coast of this continent. Meanwhile, the English also had their Hudson's Bay Company forts on Hudson Bay. The elimination of the Dutch in 1674 from around the New York area, left the French and English fur-traders to carry on their homelands' struggle for control. The English finally won possession of New France but were soon faced with another rival for control of the northern continent, the fledgling United States of America. In the ensuing century, the presence of British and Canadian fur-traders in Canada's West, above all else, protected this unsettled territory from the ever-expanding, aggressive American republic.

The fur trade also played an enormous role in exploration. Through the traders of New France (who pushed westward past the Great Lakes to the prairies searching for new sources of furs and a northwest passage) and the men of the North West company (who reached the Arctic and Pacific oceans), the Canadian fur trade opened up this vast, uncharted land. Commercial rivalry spurred adventurers to journey into unexplored areas in search of furs or economical routes. Until Canada's Confederation, the men connected to the fur trade did virtually all the exploring and mapping of western Canada.

The fur trade left a mixed legacy. It opened and preserved an enormous territory bordered by three oceans, showing that great distances could be overcome. Expanding the fur trade uncovered Canada's east-west network of rivers the highways of the fur trade into the West. The fur trade disclosed the unexplored areas of the northern part of the continent and established the groundwork for Confederation.