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National Geographic : 1982 Mar
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Inuit have hunted on the Barren Grounds for at least 3,000 years. Ironically, the vil lage of Baker Lake started as an outsider's commercial venture. The Hudson's Bay Company established the site as a trading post in 1925. 300 Years of Trade It would be difficult to travel anywhere in the Canadian north without recognizing the imprint of the world's oldest surviving trad ing company. It was chartered in 1670 by Charles II to his cousin Prince Rupert and a group of investors as "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trad ing into Hudson's Bay." The five parchment pages of the king's charter remain carefully preserved by the Henry Hudson's Changing Bay company. As well they should be, for they granted rights of "sole trade and commerce" to a land covering 1,486,000 square miles, a private empire stretching from Labrador to the Rockies, rich in furs and resources be yond even a king's wildest dreams. It was not until 1870 that the "Company" (an unadorned title it still holds in much of the Canadian north) ceded "Rupert's Land" to Canada. Even then, it took 56 more years to complete the land transfers. Today the Hudson's Bay Company no longer trades for furs, though it still buys and sells them. But much of the company's fur stock now comes from the United States, and its business interests have expanded to real estate and oil and gas development as well as merchandising. 403
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