Prince Albert and the Hudson’s Bay Company

The origins of the city of Prince Albert are intertwined with the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in a different way from many centers established during the fur trade. From 1670 the HBC was a fur trading enterprise centered on Hudson’s Bay. Inland trading posts were not established until about a hundred years later as competition with free traders from around Montreal forced the change. In 1776, some of these independent traders, including Peter Pond, built Fort Sturgeon a few kilometers west of the current city. By 1780 it had burned down after altercations with the local Indigenous people and a terrible smallpox epidemic and was never rebuilt. The HBC later built fur trading posts east of the current city of Prince Albert at Fort a la Corne and west at Hudson House, just south of where Shellbrook is now. But Prince Albert had a somewhat different connection to the Company.

The low, flat spot called Kistapinanihk in Cree was frequented by the Woodland, Swampy, and Plains Cree, Dene and Dakota people of the area. Trader canoes and York boats likely stopped there but it wasn’t until 1862 that James Isbister settled on a river lot farm at what is now the west end of Prince Albert. Isbister was an English Métis descendant of an HBC employee and a former employee himself who still worked as an occasional freighter for them. Several other members of the Isbister family settled there and it was called Isbister’s Settlement for a few years.

In 1866, James Nisbet set up a Presbyterian Mission which he named Prince Albert, in the area that is now the city centre.

The HBC then started their own farm four kilometers west of the mission in 1867. This farm was intended to provide a supply of local food for their many enterprises. Settlement was coming and posts like Fort Carlton were beginning to change from just fur trade posts to way stations for travellers and settlers.

Philip Turner was originally in charge of the farm. Turner was born in 1839 at Cumberland House, the son of Métis descendants of HBC traders. The 1881 census lists Philip as a 42-year-old clerk for the HBC in the Prince Albert District living with his wife Harriet, age 32, and their nine living children. He retired in 1890 and died in 1919 at the age of 80. His descendants continue to live in the Prince Albert, Weldon, and Fort a la Corne areas.

In 1872, the HBC selected 3000 acres east of the Mission as their reserve in the transfer of their territory called Rupert’s Land, to Canada. A settlement called Goschen, after the governor of the company, grew up around the HBC operation. About 100 acres were turned into another farm.

The HBC was still trading furs but their farming operations were becoming more important. W. S. Gore surveyed the reserve in 1869 and wrote:

The land cultivated by the Co. (about 100 acres)  and also the Presbyterian Mission of Prince Albert is on an alluvial flat which extends back from the River nearly a mile and is several miles in length, the soil which is the richest black loam is from 2 to 3 feet deep, south of the flat the ground rises and is rolling and much cut up with small ponds many of which can be drained leaving excellent land for crops. Grass and vetches grow luxuriantly and wheat does very well when not injured by summer frosts. There is no timber on the Reserve but on the North side of the river, there is plenty of Spruce pine and Poplar. [1]

William Traill took over the farm in 1870. He was born in Ontario, the son of writer Catherine Parr Traill. He joined the HBC in 1864 and by 1870 was clerk in charge of both Fort Carlton and the Prince Albert Farm. While the soil was rich the growing season was short and they grew mainly root crops and barley.

He married Harriet McKay, daughter of HBC trader William McKay and his wife, Mary Jane Cook. The McKay’s were an English Métis family who worked for the HBC. Many of their descendants still live in the Prince Albert area. He retired to a farm near Prince Albert and later moved to Meskanaw with his family. Willie Traill’s fur trade letters were collected into a book published in 2006. [2]

Traill Family, Harriet seated at middle left and Willie on far right. Courtesy of University of Calgary Archives.

Lawrence Clarke joined the HBC in 1851 and by 1867 he was the chief trader at Fort Carlton and the boss of Willie Traill and Philip Turner. He became Chief Factor in 1875 and managed significant changes in the Company. In 1878, he became Chief Factor of the Saskatchewan District and moved to Prince Albert where he died in 1890. He was married to Catherine McKay, sister to Willie Traill’s wife.

Lawrence Clarke. Courtesy of University of Calgary Archives.

Clarke had substantial influence in the District from assisting the NWMP during their first winter to affecting the outcome of the North West Resistance in 1885. Because the HBC often acted on behalf of the federal government, Clarke had a lot of power. He is described as difficult and arrogant and thought of himself as the most important man in the territory. [3] Clarke actively supported the HBC diversifying into steamboats.

Their first steamboat, the Northcote, was named after the governor, Sir Stafford Northcote. It ventured as far as Fort Carlton on the North Saskatchewan on its first trip but Prince Albert became the steamboat hub:

The Northcote made history every summer. In the season of 1880, she steamed up and down the Saskatchewan five times. For about ten cents a mile, cabin passengers rented a berth in a stateroom, while deck passengers brought their own bedding for a portion of the open deck; meals were fifty cents apiece. But if the steamer grounded or became stranded, every passenger was on his own. Generally, the Hudson’s Bay Company and its steamboat crews had little concern – outside of fares – for their passengers. [4]

In 1882, the HBC launched the Marquis. It was the largest sternwheeler ever launched on the Prairies and the fifth in a fleet that included the Northcote, the Lily, the North West and the Manitoba.

The steamboats landed in the HBC Reserve, near the flour mill and other operations in Goschen. In one of his letters Lawrence Clarke stated:

The unloading of the Steamer Northcote at Prince Albert this Season instead of unloading her at Carlton as in past years, proved that on each upward trip of the boat, we saved three and one half days. There is a perfect Steamboat landing close to where our Mill is standing on the town site of Goschen, and in future Seasons, the exchange of cargo between the upper and lower River Steamers should take place at this point…

Steamboats took over from the canoes, York boats, and oxcarts but there were problems. Constantly fluctuating river levels were the biggest issue. Sandbars appeared and disappeared. Rocks emerged and rapids rose and fell. By the late 1890’s the big steamers were finished. The Marquis was beached in Goschen and lay for many years on the shore until it was burned in the early 20th century.

The Marquis in 1907. Photo courtesy of the Prince Albert Historical Society.

Smaller steamboats like the Saskatchewan moved freight and people from Prince Albert to Cumberland House for a few more years. A land boom, lumbering, and construction of the La Colle Falls dam just east of the city all helped to keep river freight moving for a while. By 1913 it all ended when money ran out, dam financing dried up and the City abandoned the project.

The Saskatchewan docked at the HBC landing in Goschen. Photo courtesy of the Prince Albert Historical Society.

In 1880, the HBC built a steam-powered flour mill in Prince Albert to grind wheat grown in the area. It burned in 1884 and was rebuilt with modern equipment. In 1882, they enlarged their store and warehouses in Goschen, and moved headquarters there.

Goschen was a busy place. Population at the end of 1882 was about 500 people, similar to the Prince Albert mission site, with more than 5000 people in the area.

The announcement of a telegraph line increased the rivalry between Goschen and the Mission, mainly over where to locate the office. This boiled over into actual fighting and the police made six arrests. It was finally built in the Mission of Prince Albert. By late 1885 the two villages were incorporated under the name Prince Albert. Thomas McKay, brother-in-law of Lawrence Clarke and Philip Turner and another former HBC employee, became mayor. The railway finally arrived in 1890 and signalled the end of HBC domination of the area.

The HBC continued operations in Prince Albert for some years. The flour mill did well, even shipping flour as far as Vancouver. In February of 1895, it burnt down again and was rebuilt out of brick and stone with added electricity.

HBC Flour Mill in the 1890’s. Photo courtesy of the Prince Albert Historical Society.

Harold Kemp joined the HBC at the age of sixteen after moving from England. He describes the headquarters in Prince Albert as he first saw it in 1908. He describes his first sight of the buildings, arranged in a square, “a sprawling, low-raftered store, a residence converted to offices; fur rooms, a warehouse a hundred feet long, a high-picketed dog corral, and a huge barn. A quarter-mile downstream squats, half-sunken in the ground, a stone powder magazine, a hundred yards up-stream, ribs bleaching, wheelhouse askew and smokestack gone, the hulk of the riverboat, Marquis.” [5]

He takes us inside, “The place is heavy with the smell of ancient books and records, of fur, and of “Imperial Mixture” tobacco. On the wall is a map of Northern Saskatchewan. It is unlike the maps of a later day―there are too many blank, unexplored areas on it, too many lakes half-drawn, too many rivers that terminate only as dotted lines…” [6]

By the time Kemp arrived the Prince Albert operation had been supplying northern outposts for some years. A romantic young man, Kemp was nostalgic as he described a vanishing trade “Here are old and rusted guns, boiling kettles and frying pans; dog harnesses, dog whips and snowshoes. Hanging from rafters, out of reach of the mice, you’ll find Hudson’s Bay blankets. In one corner is a massive fur press, used periodically to bale fur for shipment; in another corner an ornate and high-headed toboggan, its rawhide sides emblazoned with the crest of the Company. And over all, there is a tangy, woodsy smell― the smell of the North itself.” [7]

In 1911 the HBC closed the sales shop and by the 1914/1915 season everything was closed including the flour mill. A raw fur division continued to operate in the city until 1987 when it was sold to a group of investors. Ironically, it was renamed the North West Company and their store is still located on River Street.

The HBC Raw Furs Division at 59 River Street West in the 1930’s. Photo courtesy of the Prince Albert Historical Society.

In 1972 a Hudson’s Bay retail store returned to Prince Albert setting up in the new South Hill Mall. But retail operations are subject to frequent change and in 1990 The Bay closed again.

The Hudson’s Bay Company was part of the Prince Albert area for 150 years, farming, trading furs, milling flour and selling their wares. There is little sign of their presence here now except in the old photos and maps of the Historical Society’s archives and a display at the museum.

Connie Gerwing.

CONNIE GERWING, B. Ed, M. Ed, is a board member of the Prince Albert Historical Society and past president. She has volunteered there for about 10 years, part of her retirement activities. Connie was a teacher but most of her career was as an educational counsellor with the Prince Albert Regional College and SIAST. She is almost finished a history degree at the U of S that she started in 1966.

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Endnotes

[1] HBC archives 1964, 9

[2] K. Douglas Munro, Fur Trade Letters of Willie Traill 1864-1894, Edmonton, AB, University of Alberta Press, 2006

[3] Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/clarke_lawrence_11E.html

[4] Barris, Theodore, Fire Canoe, Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1977, 56

[5] H. S. M. Kemp, Northern Trader, The Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1956, pp 16 – 17.

[6] Ibid, 17-18.

[7] Ibid, 17-18.