Adventurers and merchants flocked into Canada following the conquest of New France and lost little time assuming control of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes fur trade. Several of these men lost their lives in Pontiac's uprising. Despite the risks, these English, Yankee and Highland Scots pedlars were present in limited number in the Lake Winnipeg region by 1767. The work and knowledge of Canadien engages and commis were essential to their success. By 1774 trade at Hudson's Bay Company posts was again dropping as the "new" MontrΘal pedlars made inroads where Canadian voyageurs had previously traded. In that year alone Samuel Hearne reported to London that sixty canoes carried goods inland from the depot at Grand Portage at the head of Lake Superior. The largest building at the depot was The Great Hall where pedlars met each summer to work out partnership agreements and celebrate successful trading seasons with feasting and dancing. In 1803 the rendezvous moved north to Fort William and the buildings at Grand Portage, now in Minnesota, were abandoned. In 1937 archaeologists discovered the foundations and the fire-place ruins of The Great Hall and it has since been reconstructed.
Trade was pushed west and north with such aggressiveness that by 1778 Peter Pond, a noted pedlar, reached Lake Athabasca where he spent the winter in the heart of what would prove to be the richest northern fur producing area. Pond returned starving, but with 140 packs of furs, having stored additional packs that he could not carry with him. The technology and support system developed earlier by Canadian voyageurs was adopted in its entirety. Of particular note were the large birchbark canoes (the canot du maεtre and the canot du nord) used to move goods westward along the traditional routes. The food support system, using pork and corn in the region of the Great Lakes and pemmican in the West or pays d'en haut was adopted as well.
