River Rough, River Smooth. Anthony Dalton

      The departure of the second colonist transport from York Fort to Rock Fort in 1821, en route to the Red River Settlement. Their journey would be uphill all the way.

      In 1684, the Hudson’s Bay Company built a new fort near the mouth of the Hayes River, on the west coast of the great bay. That first fort was badly placed. Being too close to the tidal surge of Hud–son Bay, it suffered from spring flooding. Subsequent moves found the ideal location a few kilometres upriver. Named York Factory,¹⁴ after the Duke of York, it grew in importance to become the Company’s headquarters in North America. From humble beginnings it expand–ed into a sizeable town with a burgeoning population of Europeans. Beside the fort the indigenous Cree set up their own village.

      Conditions at York Factory, for both Europeans and Natives, were less than ideal. The local Cree were just more experienced at living in the wilderness. Both groups suffered unbearably cold winters during which the river and the bay froze solid. Snow ob–literated everything for months at a time. Game was scarce and the people, both European and Cree, went hungry. In contrast, when the short, damp summers finally warmed the land, the residents welcomed the temporary end of snow. Dense pods of beluga whales appeared in the estuary. Caribou herds roamed the mossy tundra. Ducks and geese returned from the south. A few black bears found their way to the coast and polar bears ambled in from the ice floes to help liven things up a little. The advent of summer also awakened the North’s greatest pest. One York Factory resident complained that there were only two seasons at York: winter and mosquitoes.¹⁵

      The fur trade was the prime reason for York Factory’s presence and, indeed, for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s existence. That far-flung enterprise developed into an enormous organization.Through the wide-ranging explorations of the Company’s employees in their search for ongoing trade, and the resultant economic development, the Hudson’s Bay Company formed the backbone for the vast area of land that is now Canada. Even so, at the end of the eighteenth century, after being in existence for 133 years, the Company still had less than five hundred employees posted in North America. It did, however, have trading posts on James Bay, the west coast of Hudson Bay, and far inland; wherever the mighty rivers took the Company’s servants.¹⁶

      The list of Hudson’s Bay Company personnel in those decades reads today like an historical catalogue of explorers and exploration. In no particular order, the following adventurers were on the employee roster at varying stages in the Company’s history. The list is a sample only and by no means complete, but most of these men would have known the Hayes River trade route well.

      David Thompson¹⁷ became famous as a cartographer. His early maps were of inestimable value in the modern mapping of western Canada. Pierre Radisson and his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, both extremely capable wilderness adventurers, were involved in the creation of the Company. Dr. John Rae,¹⁸ one-time chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was certainly the greatest explorer to roam and map the northern Canadian wilderness. Henry Kelsey,¹⁹ little more than a confident boy in his late teenage years on his first expedition, trekked inland from York Factory and spent two years exploring the prairies. Later he travelled to Hudson Bay to learn more of its northern limits. Aged explorer James Knight²⁰ was a Company man. His expedition of 1719, also to northern Hudson Bay, ended in mystery and tragedy. And then there was Samuel Hearne,²¹ perhaps the best-known of them all. He would one day command Prince of Wales Fort, opposite present-day Churchill. Hearne undertook many spectacular journeys through the unknown tundra. Historian George J. Luste justifiably referred to Samuel Hearne as the “Marco Polo of the Barren Lands.”²²

      Thanks to these intrepid men, and a host of others, the Hudson’s Bay Company name became synonymous with the exploration of central and western Canada. For more than two hundred years the Company’s servants, both European and Cree, ventured along raging, tumbling rivers in search of profit and, sometimes, each other. One of those rivers, the mighty Hayes, became the fur-trade highway to the immensity of the interior lands. In the late twentieth century, a modern band of Cree, plus one Anglo-Canadian, prepared themselves to challenge the most important river in the Hudson’s Bay Company’s history.

      The Hayes River stretches for hundreds of kilometres across Manitoba, flowing in a northeasterly direction. It is one of the few untouched major rivers in Canada.There are no hydroelectric dams, and only two settlements along its route — Norway House and Oxford House. In June 2006, the Hayes finally received its long-overdue classification as a Canadian National Heritage River.²³ As such, it will be protected against incursion by commercial interests and joins a distinguished and growing list of more than forty great Canadian rivers now protected by the CHRS, Canada’s national river conservation program.²⁴

      Unlike the fur traders of a bygone era, there were no riches waiting at the end of the river for us. No tightly packed bales of furs stowed in the boat to be sold or traded. No factor waiting at York Factory to greet us and check our cargo. We were just thirteen late-twentieth-century voyageurs heading down river in search of adventure and hoping for a glimpse into the past.

      One afternoon, during my brief stay in Winnipeg, I visited Lower Fort Garry. This national historic park was the early headquarters and residence of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s governor, George Simpson, and his wife, Frances. George Simpson was a Scottish businessman who became one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s most influential executives. A tireless traveller, Simpson came to know all the HBC fur-trade routes intimately, including the Hayes River.²⁵

      Three original York boats are on display there, two in the open, one under cover. The covered boat is claimed to be the last working York boat, sent to the fort from Norway House in 1935. Like Governor George Simpson, that boat had experienced the Hayes River in all its moods. I leaned against the weathered, dry, grey wood of an aged hull and tried to imagine what the open boat’s voyages were like. With no cabin, or other form of shelter, rain would turn a hard journey into abject misery. The slightly raised stem and stern promised some protection from waves on the larger lakes. Otherwise, both crew and cargo were at the mercy of the elements.

      Inside the museum, a well-arranged diorama showed, in words and pictures, some of the trials and tribulations faced by the early fur traders. Life for the York boat crews, especially on the long and often dangerous voyages between the Red River Settlement (present-day Winnipeg) and York Factory,