However, this is no romanticized saga. Town shows that the fur trade produced a peculiar cocktail of corporate manipulation, family ties, personal willfulness, political ineptitude, and frontier violence that led to one of the darkest periods of Canadian history. From 1811 when Lord Selkirk first brought his proposal to settle displaced Scots crofters in Rupert’s Land, to the merger of the North West and Hudson’s Bay companies in 1821, the fur trade was in the grip of turmoil. Although well-intentioned, Selkirk had already failed at several resettlement projects before he introduced the idea to the Hudson’s Bay Company ...

“Company town.” The words evoke images of rough-and-tumble loggers and gritty miners, of dreary shacks in isolated villages, of wages paid in scrip good only at price-gouging company stores of paternalistic employers. But these stereotypes are outdated, especially for those company towns that flourished well into the twentieth century. This new edition updates the status of the surviving towns and how they have changed in the fifteen years since the original edition, and what new life has been created on the sites of the ones that were razed. In the preface, Linda Carlson reflects on how wonderful it has been to meet people who lived in these towns, or had parents who did, and to hear about their memorable experiences.

In 1779 a group of independent fur traders from Montreal banded together to form the North West Company; this was a trading expedient and no one could have foreseen its brilliant and far-reaching results. Before the North West Company name disappeared in a merger with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821 it had spanned the continent, reached the Arctic, and traded round the Horn to China. Many of the great rivers and lakes of the North and West carry the names of the company’s servants as the only memorial so far accorded them: Pond, Frobisher, Mackenzie, Thompson and Fraser are merely the best remembered of perhaps the most remarkable group of associates that Canada has seen. “...accurate, magnificently organized, sparely written...one of the finest works of Canadian history I have ever read...These men have the most marvellous characters who ever founded and operated a business enterprise in North America.”—Hugh MacLennan, award-winning Canadian author and professor of English at McGill University

In an era of grand risk, fur moguls vied to command Northwest and China markets, gambling lives and capital on the price of beaver pelts, purchases of ships and trade goods, international commerce laws, and the effects of war.

The Northwest Coast documents Britain's rise to pre-eminence in this far-flung corner of the empire. It shows how the relentless activities of its commercial interests, the adroit use of its naval power, and the steely resolve of its diplomats secured British claims to dominion and rights to trade along the Northwest Coast. Written by a leading maritime scholar and based on fresh research into known manuscripts and printed works on Pacific trade and exploration, this book incorporates new interpretations on exploration and commercial activity in this area.

Describes duties, wages, stations, and many other details concerning the approximately one hundred voyageurs in the English River district during 1785 and 1786.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1884.

"Manufactured at Green Bay, Wisconsin" is an account of Northwest Engineering Company from its early days as a builder of tugboats for the World War 1 effort to the role the company played as one of the premier manufacturers of excavators in the world.The team of Folsom and Torres trace Northwest's rise and eventual demise in vivid clarity giving an account of the company's key personnel and products. Contained within, on over 300 pages, is informative text and over 400 b/w and color images plus drawings from the authors', past employees', and other contributors' personal collections. Enthusiasts of heavy equipment and the heavy construction machinery industry, and devotees of local interest, will find new insight into this past enterprise of Titletown, USA.

An exciting and fast paced adventure story based in colonial America. Written from the viewpoint of a fictional friend of the Historic Robert Rodgers, famed in America as the leader of 'Rodgers' Rangers' a guerrilla squadron harassing the English forces throughout the American War of Independence. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.