Hudson Bay Christmas Display
The Hudson Bay has a Christmas special for everyone to enjoy. Each year during the holiday season Hudson Bay puts up some really awesome festive displays in its windows. People from all over actually gather to visit them and these displays get featured in the news too. This year the displays are extra special because it has gone high tech. A combination of animatronics and digital displays in the background make for quite a change from the traditional ones that were always shown on previous Christmas’
Hudson Bay Company is actually one of the oldest surviving companies in Canada. It was founded in 1607 and initially started business in the lucrative fur trade of that time. Later the company came the sole owner of vast tracks of land called Rupert’s Land covering an area of 3.9 million square kilometers and held this under Royal Charters for more than two hundred years (1670 to 1870)! These areas consisted of territory mostly in present-day Canada that included the whole of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, southern Nunavut, and northern parts of Ontario and Quebec. It also had territory in the US including parts of the states of Minnesota and North Dakota and very small parts of Montana and South Dakota. Basically during this period the company operated as the de facto government of these North American territories until the Rupert’s Land Act of 1868 change the title as the land was sold to the British Crown which in turn gave it to the fledgling Dominion of Canada.
The sometimes controversial Hudson Bay Company evolved and started mercantile businesses in the mid nineteenth century. Later growing and eventually buying and owning Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord and Taylor. To this day this company is closely interwoven with the fabric of Canada and its history. So the next time you happen to walk by their displays on Queens Street stop and ponder a bit about all the history behind each of them.
Here are some more photos for you to enjoy.
