Part 6 (1/2)

*According to'l~d Barris, the Northcote's bell 11 now beckons a con- gregation to the Duck Lake Anglican (hutch each Sunday; while a hundred miles away the Gardiner Presbyterian Church-now Fred Light's tiny museum in the old town of Battleford-houses the Northcote's three-tone steam whistle. And three feet of Northcote deck plank functions as a ...

cribbage board in one Pi ince Albert living room.”

THE GREAT FIRE CANOES 97.

as late as 1887, anti the North Tf cst ran a tramp service along the river for another dozen years.*

One by one the s.h.i.+ps disappeared. Their final resting place was seldom at dockside. They died where they had lived, at river bends or at the edge of rapids. They were left to sink where they had rammed their final rock or crunched into their last riverbank. Eventually, their superstructures disintegrated into driftwood, and their rusting remains were blanketed by the s.h.i.+fting sands and weeping willows.

*Only the Keenora, converted from steam to diesel during her career and restored by the Marine A luseum of Manitoba, now survives. Of the scores of pa.s.senger steamers of the inland waterwavs of the West, only four sternwheelers-the Klondike and Keno in Yukon and the Aloyie and Sicamous in British Columbia-remain.

CHAPTER 5.

PROGRESSION AND.

BETRAYAL.

”Fine promises b.u.t.ter no parsnips.

HB(' traderjanies Lockhart

TRAVERSING THe STILL UNOCCUPIED WEST by stearnboat and canoe, on foot and snowshoe, aboard sleighs and buckboards, Donald Smith spent most of a decade after the Red RiNer Rebellion and the subsequent surrender of the Hl,(”,s monopoly holding the Company together long enough to transform its core business from fur trading to real estate. Apart from laying down a dras- tically altered operational code in line with the HBCs new compet.i.tive environment, Smith's main concern was to deal with the increasingly strident demands of the Company's wintering partners for their share of the Canadian government's Y,300,000 cash down payment on Rupert's Land, According to the 1821 and 1834 Deed Polls, which set down the rules of their engagement, Chief Factors and Chief Traders were not employees but partners. To them belonged 40 percent of the Company's equity, divided on a share basis according to rank, and they were thus ent.i.tled to the same proportion of its net profit.This was not sorne form of earnings incentive; the dividends plus a modest subsistence allowance represented their sole Mcon-te. Having suffered through many

99.

100 LABRADOR SMITH.

downturns in fur prices, they seemed ent.i.tled to partic.i.p.ate in the Company's cash windfalls.They argued convincingly that Rupert's Land was available for sale mainly because they and their predecessors had legitimized an~ expanded Charles 11's original land grant through right of occupation. They felt particularly deserving because the transfer to Canada, which had destroyed the monopoly that made the fur trade so profitable, was bound to endanger their livelihood. At least one favourable court judgment had upheld the basis of their claim. When the Company's headquarters building on Fenchurch Street was sold at a profit five years earlier, London's Chancery Court had ruled the wintering partners were ent.i.tled to two-fifths of the proceeds, since the original purchase price had been paid out of the fur trade's gross income. Using that precedent, the overseas officers also claimed two-fifths of the $450,000 the Company had recently been awarded for giving up its Oregon territories to the United States.

When these points were raised by his Chief Factors and Chief Traders at the Northern Council meeting held at Norway House in the summer of 1870, Smith promised to make their case in London. Even if he was a stranger, the field men thought they recognized in the man they appropriately nicknamed ”Labrador Smith” a colleague who had connections with the powerful and who could salvage their estates. ”Our immediate destiny is in your hands,” one of the Chief Factors pleaded with him. ”You know our life-you know flow arduous our labours are. In nearly every instance they involved long servitude, separation from friends and relations, many hards.h.i.+ps which we feel more sensitively as time wears away ... These might be, as they often are, borne cheerfully even for a long period, were the prospects of retire- merit on an adequate competency in sight; but failing this hope, they are almost insupportable.”

PROGRESSION AND BETRAYAL 101.

Sir Stafford Northcote, who was named 1113C Governor when the Earl of Kimberley resigned to become Lord Privy Seal in the Gladstone government, balked at sharing theE300,OOO award, insisting that the value of the wild land had not been improved by the fur traders' activities. In fact, Northcote enjoyed little nianoeuvring room. For the first time in its long history, the Hudson's Bay Company was no longer controlled by the London Committee. Since the sale to the International Financial Society in 1863 there were no more ”sleeping partners” who could be counted on to vote automatically with the directors on the conduct of the fur trade.* Instead, the stock was actively traded on the London Exchange, and annual meetings were swayed by whatever coalition of shareholders emerged on any particular issue. These new-style investors, hard City men with long pedigrees but little sense of history, felt no allegiance to the traditions of the Company; their only concern was to increase stock yields. During some of the early years -.ifter the end of the Company's monopoly, net revenues had been so paltry that winding up the Hl3c and splitting up its a.s.sets seemed entirely appropriate-but no one was quite certain how such an ancient royally chartered enterprise could be extinguished.

Smith spent the summer of 1871 in London advancing his officers' claims.

Even as he was arguing their case, he was haunted by that train ride he had taken eighteen months earlier on his way to Red River, through the fertile farmlands lining the railway tracks north and west of St Paul.

With the flBC about to receive t.i.tle from Canada to seven million acres of what was the northward extension ofthat rich soil, he was convinced ofsomething most of his Chief Factors only vaguely suspected: that furry

*For details of this transaction, see Caesars of the Wilderness, hardcover, pages 369-373.

102 LABRADOR SMITH.

animals would not be the main source of the Company's profits much longer.

He realized that where buffalo roamed, cattle would one day graze, and had ascertained that much of the land about to come into the Company's possession was favoured with two more hours of suns.h.i.+ne a day during the wheat-inaturing season than other farming areas. But that wa,; only the beginning of Smith's vision. He knew that to switch the prairie economy from fur to grain would require large-capacity transportation-a railway network, initially (town to St Paul, Minnesota, and eventually right to the Pacific. Reverting to character, Smith merged his own aspirations with the country's future and turned the combination into a personal mission.

He became determined that in some as yet unpredictable way hewould partic.i.p.ate in construction of a railway across the Canadian West.

Although he was only two years out of Labrador, circ.u.mstances had conspired to place Smith at the vortex of a historic transformation.

Despite his very recent promotion, he suddenly commanded enormous leverage within the councils of the HBC. The Red River incident had made him all but indispensable in rearranging the Company's overseas affairs.

He had proved during his long Labrador stewards.h.i.+p to be a capable fur trader, worthy of the Company's confidence. In his dealings with Riel he had gained the respect of Canada's Prime Minister, the confidence of the North-West's settlers, and the trust of the HBCs officers. Having accomplished all this so quickly, Smith began to sense that his destiny was not on the gumbo streets of Fort Garry or even in the relatively sophisticated offices and curtained salons of Montreal. It was in London, among the patricians of Empire transacting the world's important commerce, that he wanted eventually to claim his roost.

As a first step, Smith set out to ingratiate himself with the Hudson's Bay Company's directors, especially PROGRESSION AND BETRAYAL 103.

Governor Northcote, a seasoned political juggler who had honed his skills as secretary to Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for India. He intended to show Northcote and the HBC Committeemen that he was reallv one of them, that he had the Company's best long-term interests at heart rather than the dispensable concerns of the wintering partners. He did this by suggesting a workable compromise to resolve the fur traders' demands that they share in the government's E300,000 payout. Northcote later won shareholder approval for the scheme, which provided the winterers with a one-time payment ofY,107,055, It also guaranteed continuation of their 40-percent equity position and perpetuated their 40-percent share of trading profits.

In return, they had to sign a new Deed Poll that specifically exempted them from proceeds of future HBC land sales.

Having expected little, most of the fur traders were pleased with the suggestion, particularly the cash, since the service then had virtually no pension provisions. When he returned to Montreal, Smith was feasted by the outback veterans, who presented him with a silver serving set worth Y,500. Only a few of the more astute characters realized that Smith had signed their professional death warrants. By giving up future land profits, the onetime lords of the forests had been rendered powerless and poor. The appropriately grateful London board showed its appreciation by immediately promoting Smith to Commissioner at a generous annual Y,2,000, and a year later to Chief Commissioner, with a healthy salary increase.

The Factors held desultory discussions about resigning to establish a new independent fur-trading company and several retired on the spot. Among those who quit in disgust was Chief Trader Roderick McKenzie. ”If we had insisted in partic.i.p.ating in the sale of lands there might 104 LABRADOR SMITH.

be some hopes of a certain remuneration for our services, which under the present r6gime with all the expense is very doubtful,” he wrote to a colleague in the Peace River country. Another senior trader, James Lockhart, noted: ”It is all very well for Donald A. Smith, with his Y,2,000 secure annually, to puff the new arrangements. But 'fine promises b.u.t.ter no parsnil)s,' and you will all find yourselves fooled. . . . For your sake and the sakes of a few other true friends of mine still in the service, I hope things may turn out all right, but I do not expect it, and would advise you to do as others have done, i.e. send back their commissions with the note, 'Declined with thanks.”' Still, under pressure from Smith, most of the traders signed the fateful Deed Poll.