1. THE DAWN OF CANADIAN HISTORY By Stephen Leacock. 2. THE MARINER OF ST MALO By Stephen Leacock....

3. THE FOUNDER OF NEW FRANCE* By Charles W. Colby. 4. THE BLACKROBES* By J. Edgar Middleton. 5. THE SEIGNEURS OF OLD CANADA By W. Bennett Munro. 6. THE GREAT INTENDANT By Thomas Chapais. 7. THE FIGHTING GOVERNOR* By Charles W. Colby....

8. THE GREAT FORTRESS* By William Wood. 9. THE ACADIAN EXILES* By Arthur G. Doughty. 10. THE PASSING OF NEW FRANCE By William Wood. 11. THE WINNING OF CANADA By William Wood....

12. THE INVASION OF 1775* By C. Frederick Hamilton. 13. BATTLEFIELDS OF 1812-14* By William Wood....

14. PONTIAC: THE WAR CHIEF OF THE OTTAWAS* By Thomas Guthrie Marquis. 15. BRANT: THE WAR CHIEF OF THE SIX NATIONS By Louis Aubrey Wood. 16. TECUMSEH: THE LAST GREAT LEADER OF HIS PEOPLE* By Ethel T. Raymond....

17. THE 'ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND' ON HUDSON BAY By Agnes C. Laut. 18. PATHFINDERS OF THE GREAT PLAINS By Lawrence J. Burpee. 19. PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC COAST* By Agnes C. Laut. 20. ADVENTURERS OF THE FAR NORTH By Stephen Leacock. 21. THE UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS By W. Stewart Wallace. 22. THE RED RIVER COLONY* By Louis Aubrey Wood. 23. THE CARIBOO TRAIL* By Agnes C. Laut....

24. THE 'FAMILY COMPACT'* By W. Stewart Wallace. 25. THE REBELLION IN LOWER CANADA* By A. D. DeCelles. 26. THE TRIBUNE OF NOVA SCOTIA* By William L. Grant. 27. THE WINNING OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT* By Archibald MacMechan. 28. THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION* By Sir Joseph Pope. 29. THE DAY OF SIR JOHN MACDONALD* By Sir Joseph Pope. 30. THE DAY OF SIR WILFRED LAURIER* By Oscar D. Skelton....

31. ALL AFLOAT By William Wood. 32. THE RAILROAD BUILDERS* By Oscar D. Skelton. Note: The volumes marked with an asterisk are in preparation. The others are published....

Thirty or more years ago, one who stood at the foot of Main Street, Winnipeg, in front of the stone gate leading to the inner court of Fort Garry, and looked up across the river flats, would have seen a procession as picturesque as ever graced the streets of old Quebec—the dog brigades of the Hudson's Bay Company coming in from the winter's hunt. Against the rolling snowdrifts appeared a line, at first grotesquely dwarfed under the mock suns of the eastern sky veiled in a soft frost fog. Then a

Though the adventurers to Hudson Bay turned to fur trading and won wealth, and discovered an empire while pursuing the little beaver across a continent, the beginning of all this was not the beaver, but a myth—the North-West Passage—a short way round the world to bring back the spices and silks and teas of India and Japan. It was this quest, not the lure of the beaver, that first brought men into the heart of New World wilds by way of Hudson Bay. In this search Henry Hudson led the way when he s

Little Denmark, whose conquering Vikings on their 'sea horses' had scoured the coasts of Europe, now comes on the scene. Hudson, an Englishman, had discovered the Bay, but the port of Churchill, later to become an important post of the fur trade, was discovered by Jens Munck, the Dane. In the autumn of 1619 Munck came across the Bay with two vessels—the Unicorn , a warship with sea horses on its carved prow, and the Lamprey , a companion sloop—scudding before an equinoctial squall. Through a hur

In Boston the commissioners of His Majesty King Charles II were reviewing the affairs of the American Plantations. One of the commissioners was Sir George Carteret, and when he sailed for England in August 1665 he was accompanied by the two French explorers. It gives one a curiously graphic insight into the conditions of ocean travel in those days to learn that the royal commissioner's ship was attacked, boarded, and sunk by a Dutch filibuster. Carteret and his two companions landed penniless in

Every year three ships were sailing to the Bay and returning to England laden with peltry; but in 1672 it was observed by the traders at the fort that fewer Indians than usual came down the river with furs. In the next year there were still fewer. For some reason the trade was falling off. Radisson urged Bayly to establish new forts on the west coast, and at length the governor consented to go with him on his regular summer cruise to Nelson. When they came back to Rupert in August they were surp

The Company now had permanent forts at Rupert, Albany, and Moose rivers on James Bay, and at the mouth of the Hayes river on the west coast. The very year that Churchill was appointed governor and took his place at the board of the Governing Committee, a small sloop had sailed as far north as Churchill, or the River of the Strangers, to reconnoitre and fix a site for a post. The fleet of trading vessels had increased even faster than the forts. Seven ships—four frigates and three sloops—were dis

In spite of French raid and foray, the Governing Committee in London pursued the even tenor of its way. Strict measures were enforced to stop illicit and clandestine trading on the part of the Company's servants. In a minute of November 2, 1687, the Committee 'taking notice that several of the officers and servants have brought home in their coats and other garments severall pieces of furrs to the great prejudice of the Co'y, do order that such as have any garments lined with furrs shall forthwi

When the House of Orange came to the throne, it was deemed necessary that the Company's monopoly, originally granted by the Stuarts, should be confirmed. Nearly all the old shareholders, who had been friends of the Stuarts, sold out, and in 1697, the year of the disaster related in the last chapter, the Company applied for an extension of its royal charter by act of parliament. The fur buyers of London opposed the application on the grounds that: (1) The charter conferred arbitrary powers to whi

On the era prior to the Cession (1763) very few printed records of the Hudson's Bay Company exist. Most books on the later period—in which the conflict with the North-West Company took place—have cursory sketches of the early era, founded chiefly on data handed down by word of mouth among the servants and officers of the Company. On this early period the documents in Hudson's Bay House, London, must always be the prime authority. These documents consist in the main of the Minute Books of some tw