North West Fur Company

North West Company

Company coat of arms
Former type	Private
Industry	Fur trade
Fate	Merger
Successor	Hudson's Bay Company
Founded	1789
Founder	Benjamin Frobisher, Joseph, Simon McTavish, Robert Grant, Nicholas Montour, Patrick Small, William Holmes, George McBeath
Defunct	1821 (1821)
Headquarters	Montreal, Lower Canada
Area served	United States territory, Spanish territory, Russian Empire territory, Qing Dynasty China, British Canada

The North West Company was a fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in what is present-day Western Canada. With great wealth at stake, tensions between the companies increased to the point where several minor armed skirmishes broke out, and the two companies were forced by the British government to merge.

After the French landed in Quebec in 1608, coureurs des bois spread out and built a fur trade empire in the St. Lawrence basin. The French competed with the Dutch (from 1614) and English (1664) in New York and the English in Hudson Bay (1670). Unlike the French who travelled into the northern interior and traded with First Nations in their camps and villages, the English made bases at trading posts on Hudson Bay, inviting the indigenous people to trade. After 1731, La Vérendrye pushed trade west beyond Lake Winnipeg. After the British conquest of New France in 1763 (and defeat of France in Europe), management of the fur trading posts was taken over by English-speakers. These so-called "pedlars" began to merge because competition cost them money and because of the high costs of outfitting canoes to the far west.

There are historical references to a North West Company, as early as 1770, involving the Montreal-based traders Benjamin Frobisher, Isaac Todd, Alexander Henry the elder and others, but the standard histories trace the Company to a 16-share organization formed in 1779. For the next four years, it was little more than a loose association of a few Montreal merchants who discussed how they might break the stranglehold the Hudson's Bay Company held on the North American fur trade. In the winter of 1783-84, the North West Company was officially created on a long-term basis, with its corporate offices on Vaudreuil Street in Montreal. It was led by businessmen Benjamin Frobisher, his brother Joseph, and Simon McTavish, along with investor-partners who included Robert Grant, Nicholas Montour, Patrick Small, William Holmes, and George McBeath.