Retelling the Hudson’s Bay saga for today’s readers

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — It’s a history that has been told and retold many times, from scholarly articles to elementary school textbooks. Indeed, it’s also been argued that its early history is also the origin story of modern Canada. Now, the saga of the 350-year-old Hudson’s Bay Company is being told again in the new book, The Company.

LISTEN: The Company

The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire is the first treatment of the subject in more than 30 years.

Author Stephen R. Bown notes that world has changed a lot since then, particularly our view of how Indigenous peoples fit into the story as well as how we interpret primary sources.

“For example, you take an explorer’s journal,” he explains. “It’s very easy to fall into the trap of telling the story from the point of view of someone who wrote the journal. What I’ve tried to do is emphasize that the journal is the source, but it’s not the story.”

“What I’ve tried to do with my book is to bring in a wider, more diverse group of characters who contributed to the company over the major years of its operations and to distinguish between those different periods of the company.”

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Bown argues the Company wasn’t always the large, controlling monopoly it has been portrayed to be; rather, for much of its history, it was just another player in the larger Indigenous societies of the time.

The book is coming out at a time when Hudson’s Bay, the department store chain, finds itself increasingly in trouble, unable to pay its rent in some cases. Bown admits he didn’t anticipate the book being so topical when he first put pen to paper.

Today on @NEWS1130, I speak with Stephen R. Bown, author of The Company:  The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire. "What I've tried to do is to bring in a more diverse group of characters who contributed to the company over the major years of its operations.” #1130bookshelf pic.twitter.com/xasofrZaaA

— John Ackermann ???? (@jackermann) December 13, 2020

“You know, there’s a bit of, I don’t know if irony is the right word, but it’s an interesting development,” he says. “I don’t know how they’re going to pivot from this but they have had enormous challenges in the past and came back from them.”

“After 350 years of being in business, it would be sad to see it entirely disappear,” Bown adds.

The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire is available from Doubleday Canada.