by Nikki Rajala | Jun 28, 2019 | Featured
After five weeks traveling in 1793, John Macdonell and two others arrive at Michilimackinac, where they spend a companionable day or so. Then they hustle on to the rendezvous where important company decisions are being made. His journal continues, the fifth part in...
by Nikki Rajala | Apr 21, 2019 | Featured
Imagine the array of specialty goods from 1800 — lace handkerchiefs, fragrant tea, violin strings, glass beads, printed calico, nutmegs, lacquered boxes, powdered vermilion, shiny knives and kettles — and feast your senses. Their uniqueness, their usefulness draws...
by Nikki Rajala | Jun 23, 2018 | Featured
A “point” blanket (one with short lines of thread stitched into one side, called “points”) is what we now call a Hudson’s Bay blanket. But: Hudson’s Bay Company wasn’t the first to introduce the point blanket. Point blankets were commonly...
by Nikki Rajala | Apr 14, 2018 | Featured
My sister Kris visited Winnipeg last year and presented me with this gift card from the flagship Hudson’s Bay Company store. Love the trademark stripes — and carrying it around. Then I realized, “How apt!” Because the fur trade popularized the system of commercial...
by Nikki Rajala | Oct 7, 2017 | Featured
is about the Hudson’s Bay Company’s role in Canada. Mears is an authority on the subject of bushcraft and survival.* He speaks with the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, which commissioned authentic birch bark canoes. Mears paddles a small one...
