TESTIFYING before the Parliamentary Committee of 1857, Edward Ellice said: "Nothing that previously took place in the affairs of the Hudson's Bay Company can at all have reference to what has been the conduct or the management of the Company for the last forty years." This is the focal point about which Mr. Pinkerton builds his book. There is no connection save the name between the original "Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay" and the modern institution which has played so important a part in the development of northern and western Canada. For a century and a half after the original charter had been granted in 1670 by Charles II the "Adventurers" were content with a monopoly of the fur trade in the regions touching directly on the Bay. The initiative for further exploration and expansion was lacking. At the close of the 18th Century came the conflict with the newly established "Nor' Westers", which led to the famous Red River dispute of Lord Selkirk's time. For all practical purposes the younger company absorbed the older one and took it over together with the charter and the name. The retention of the latter has led to the endless discussion and misinterpretation of the new established facts. Since 1822, when the Company control became fundamentally Canadian rather than English, it has been the power in Canada which has justly "fired the popular imagination of romance and high enterprise" during the last century.

The book is neither a standard history of the company, nor an expose of its record. It is rather a popular account of the two centuries and a half of the Company's existence, with the emphasis on the human elements of the drama. At times the author's conversational style suffers considerably from incoherence; this is more than offset by his intimate knowledge of and interest in his subject. And whatever the relative merits and failings of the book may be, the now almost legendary figures of Radisson and Hearne, Kelsey and Thompson, and, of course, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, are brought to life again in its pages.