Since the days of the French trader La VΘrendrye in the 1730s, a post had stood at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, today in the heart of the city of Winnipeg. Upper Fort Garry, begun in 1822 near the site of the Nor'Westers' post, was rebuilt in 1837 to serve as the Hudson's Bay Company's administrative centre for the Red River area.
The building in the centre of the interior view was known as Bachelor's Hall, since it housed the unmarried clerks and junior officers. Ballantyne's description of the rooms in a Bachelor's Hall gives an idea of the simplicity of this accommodation:
None of these bedrooms were carpeted; none of them boasted a chair--the trunks and boxes of the persons to whom they belonged answering instead; and none of the beds were graced with curtains. Notwithstanding this emptiness, however, they had a somewhat furnished appearance, from the number of greatcoats, leather capots, fur caps, worsted sashes, guns, rifles, shot-belts, snow-shoes, and powder-horns with which the walls were profusely decorated.
Servants were housed in military type barracks, and while a family might have the "luxury" of its own room, conditions must have been very crowded by our standards.
