Emperor of the North

by James Raffan

Book Overview

The histories of Sir George Simpson and the Hudson's Bay Company are inextricably intertwined, for Simpson's business acumen and go-ahead personality would take a failing fur trading business to a position of great wealth and political power. Controlling a vast trading territory that stretched over 1/12 the world's surface, The HBC became the most significant business in 18th and 19th century Canada and shaped the nation. As its head, Sir George Simpson...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0006394876
• ISBN13: 9780006394877
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.2" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

James Raffin's Emperor of the North

Without Sir George Simpson, for better or for worse, Western Canada would not exist. A fiesty little illegitimate Scot, aged 28, who the Governors of the Hudson's Bay Company plucked, from outside the fur trade and the company, from a London counting house and sent to take over the company's operations, sight unseen. For 40 years, mainly by commanding brigades of 36 foot canoes d'maitre with manic intensity, he expanded (onto the Pacific Coast) and preserved the company, circumnavigated the globe through Russia, sired a score of children throughout his domain and behaved as most great men, given great power, behave. Raffan tells a story impossible to put down, loves the north and loves the canoe.