June 30, 1822

June 30, 1822

Dear Diary,

It’s been a very, very long time since I last wrote in you. Ok, ok, it’s been like 26 years (or something like that) since I last wrote in you. But you’re lucky I still have you; mama was about to throw you out!

Anyways…

Like mama promised, she took me to the news stand everyday, and she even wrote down some news she thought I would like.

So…

You better brace yourself for the weeks worth of news you’re about to hear.

I’ll start with telling you about the Fur Trade Competition.

Well I think you’ve heard of the Hudson Bay Company; I call it HBC for short. You know, I always thought that trading was boring. I mean, all you do is give people fur in exchange for something like…I don’t know…food…or tools. Turns out, it’s a lot different than that.

So there are two different systems; one in the north and one in the south. The Montreal based trade is run by partnerships of England and Scots, and they competed against one another and HBC. Then a group of traders from Montreal joined forces and called themselves the North West Company. So my point is that HBC and the North West Company was having a huge fur trade competition and in 1783, the North West Company DOMINATED the fur trade. Since the North West Company was getting top quality furs, HBC was forced to leave Hudson Bay and try to start a new trading post.

But there are still a lot of traders I forgot to mention. There are the Métis people, Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, and David Thompson.

I will tell you a little about each one of them.

So the Métis people were very successful because their fathers were French coureurs de bois or Scottish traders, and their mothers were First Nations people. That is what gave the Métis people a strong trading advantage.

I didn’t really write about Alexander Mackenzie because I thought his story was kind of boring.

As for Simon Fraser and David Thompson, they went west of the Rocky Mountains and opened a new trading post there.

And you know how I told you that the North West Company dominated the HBC…well…both the companies ended up joining forces and some how the North West Companies went out of business. (I have no idea how that happened).

And that’s all for now Diary. I will get back to you tomorrow.

Love,

Samantha Jones