How Did The Hudson's Land Affect Society

On May 2nd The Hudson’s Bay Company was founded. It was an organization that thrived on the fur trade in its early days then went into the retail business and continued to have the same success. On November 19th, 1869, the Hudson’s Bay Company signed a document called The Deed of Surrender. The Deed of Surrender was a document in which the HBC agreed to selling Rupert's Land to Canada for £300 000 and that the company would receive 1/20 of all the lands to be surveyed in the Fertile Belt (an area around Lake of the Woods, Winnipeg River waterways, and The Rockies.From that point on, there were many drastic changes to the HBC that we can say influenced the future development of the company. The decisions that the company’s leaders made after

Who was affected by the deed? Does this make it significant? The Deed of Surrender influenced the conversion in the HBC from the fur trade to retail and it was a factor in why the First Nations people were denied the land that was promised to them. It also had a vast impact on the people who lived on the land during the time of the fur trade.

The deed in and of itself was a big decision made by the company to relinquish such a large portion of its land. But with the progression of what society had deemed as “fashion”, had diverted from fur top hats and such things and the HBC no longer needed such a vast amount of land that they exclusively owned for trapping and hunting. As compensation, “The Hudson’s Bay Company may for 50 years after the surrender, claim any township or district within the Fertile Belt in which land is set out for settlement”. This meant that the company could continue to make a profit and would not lose all the power they had previously had. With the land under the new ownership of the Crown, new immigrants arrived and began to inhabit the land and the HBC recognized these people as the new customers that they would have to appeal to with their products. In addition, these new people shopped

The Aboriginals had original taught the early settlers how to trap and hunt about the land but in the documents associated with the deed and the land transfer, it was written that “Any claims of Indians too compensation for lands required for purposes of settlement shall be disposed of by the Canadian Government and the company shall be relieved of all responsibility in respect of them.”. Instead of the company leaving land for those who had aided them in the beginning. The singled them out due to racism and did not include them in any of the agreements between the HBC and the Crown in which they would receive land for themselves. This could have also contributed to the prejudice against the Aboriginals in future years because during that time period land was equal to power so those without land were treated as the poor and had no say. The deed also affected those who were against poaching and hunting. In 1997, “Hudson's Bay Company was forced to save money by making the unpopular decision to sell off its northern stores and fur auction houses”. Protesters for animal rights groups claimed the decision to sell its fur actions houses as their victory but the company insisted “...that it was simply trying to meet customer demand”. The company's selection had consequences since they would now have to fire more than a hundred thousand workers