Routes and Dates of Penetration of the Fur Trade in the Northwest Territories.
This map shows the progressive dates of penetration of the fur trade in northern Canada, as well as the major routes of penetration. As an economic activity the fur trade tended to scatter native communities, particularly prior to 1940. Three-quarters of all population centres in the North existed primarily as a result of the fur trade. Posts existed at over two hundred different locations in the Northwest Territories at various times. After the trade became "free" in 1870 several different types of trading establishments appeared: permanent posts, usually involving a store; "floating posts" operating from a schooner along the coast; and "flying posts" involving individual trappers who supplemented their income by trading as well. By 1927 regulations were in place requiring the owners of all posts to be licensed by the federal government.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries major firms, in addition to the Hudson's Bay Company, included the Alberta partnership of Hislop and Nagle (which became the Northern Trading Company in 1911 and Northern Traders Ltd. in 1924), the Boston-based trading firm of Lampson and Hubbard, the Canalaska Trading Company of San Francisco, and perhaps the most famous post-1870 rival of the Hudson's Bay Company, Revillon FrÅres Trading Company, the Canadian branch of a long-established French fur company. All of these competitors were out of business by 1939, most having been acquired by the Hudson's Bay Company.
