The Hudson Bay Company's end?
Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:07 pm
Kind of sad to see a large part of Canada's history get baught by Americans. I'm suprise the HBC is even letting that happen, but money talks.
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen...70-9eba1d1644aa
TORONTO (CP) - Centuries before there was a country called Canada, there was the Hudson's Bay Co.
Incorporated in May 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay, it concentrated on the fur trade during its first 200 years of existence.
"In order for us to understand the development of the Prairies, to understand relations between natives and non-natives, the Hudson's Bay Co. played such a tremendous role that we have to acknowledge it," York University history professor Marcel Martel commented Friday after the company received a $1-billion takeover bid by U.S. businessman Jerry Zucker.
"They were there because they wanted to take advantage of a lucrative business, the fur trade, and of course they relied heavily on natives, on voyageurs, French-Canadians."
The company's history is an epic tale of a private-sector exploration and exploitation of a large part of the continent - and then an ongoing failure to fully profit from its assets, said Joe Martin, director of Canadian business history at the University of Toronto.
"There's this romanticism around the company, but the more you look at it, it's a story of lost opportunities."
In 1869, its vast chartered territory - the region of northwestern Quebec, northern Ontario and western and arctic territories whose rivers drain into Hudson Bay - was transferred to the two-year-old government of Canada.
In return, the company received 300,000 pounds in cash and about five per cent of the arable land in what now is Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
"It's the biggest real-estate transaction in the history of the world, and nobody's heard of it," commented Martin.
After spending the 1880s selling Prairie farmland to settlers, the company turned to retail trade, building a chain of western Canadian department stores and later - belatedly, in the 1960s - entering the eastern retail market.
"There's a lack of reality around this" which has continued to the present day, said Martin.
"There are these cultures within organizations that last for an extraordinarily long time, and if the management doesn't take very real stock of it, they'll be captive to the culture."
Other ventures over the years included running oil and gas companies, engaging in property development and dabbling in businesses ranging from liquor distilling to travel agencies, credit bureaus and auction houses.
Meanwhile, the company continued to expand its retail operations organically and through acquisitions.
The most notable of those were the 1960 purchase of Morgan's department stores, the 1978 takeover of the Zellers discount chain, the 1979 purchase of the Simpsons stores, the 1990 acquisition of the Towers group, the 1993 takeover of the Woodward's department stores in B.C. and Alberta, and the 1998 purchase of Kmart Canada.
(continued)
Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3895, old post ID:31835
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen...70-9eba1d1644aa
TORONTO (CP) - Centuries before there was a country called Canada, there was the Hudson's Bay Co.
Incorporated in May 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay, it concentrated on the fur trade during its first 200 years of existence.
"In order for us to understand the development of the Prairies, to understand relations between natives and non-natives, the Hudson's Bay Co. played such a tremendous role that we have to acknowledge it," York University history professor Marcel Martel commented Friday after the company received a $1-billion takeover bid by U.S. businessman Jerry Zucker.
"They were there because they wanted to take advantage of a lucrative business, the fur trade, and of course they relied heavily on natives, on voyageurs, French-Canadians."
The company's history is an epic tale of a private-sector exploration and exploitation of a large part of the continent - and then an ongoing failure to fully profit from its assets, said Joe Martin, director of Canadian business history at the University of Toronto.
"There's this romanticism around the company, but the more you look at it, it's a story of lost opportunities."
In 1869, its vast chartered territory - the region of northwestern Quebec, northern Ontario and western and arctic territories whose rivers drain into Hudson Bay - was transferred to the two-year-old government of Canada.
In return, the company received 300,000 pounds in cash and about five per cent of the arable land in what now is Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
"It's the biggest real-estate transaction in the history of the world, and nobody's heard of it," commented Martin.
After spending the 1880s selling Prairie farmland to settlers, the company turned to retail trade, building a chain of western Canadian department stores and later - belatedly, in the 1960s - entering the eastern retail market.
"There's a lack of reality around this" which has continued to the present day, said Martin.
"There are these cultures within organizations that last for an extraordinarily long time, and if the management doesn't take very real stock of it, they'll be captive to the culture."
Other ventures over the years included running oil and gas companies, engaging in property development and dabbling in businesses ranging from liquor distilling to travel agencies, credit bureaus and auction houses.
Meanwhile, the company continued to expand its retail operations organically and through acquisitions.
The most notable of those were the 1960 purchase of Morgan's department stores, the 1978 takeover of the Zellers discount chain, the 1979 purchase of the Simpsons stores, the 1990 acquisition of the Towers group, the 1993 takeover of the Woodward's department stores in B.C. and Alberta, and the 1998 purchase of Kmart Canada.
(continued)
Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3895, old post ID:31835