"Lords of the North" was the appellation sometimes applied to those
intrepid Factors and Chief Factors of H.B.C. who for many years
gathered in annual conclave at some central fort to arrange for the
administration and provisioning of the great fur-trade districts.
Norway House, Fort Carlton on the Saskatchewan, Fort Garry on the Red
and the "Stone Fort" were successively the meeting places of these
ancient councils.
When the season's furs had been gathered and stoutly baled and marked
with the cryptic signs which destined them for the far-away auction mart
at London--when the shouting, chanting fur brigades of the north went
swinging away down roaring watercourses to meet the sailing ships on the
great Bay--just at this time the bearded chieftains of the inland
districts mobilized their voluminous accounts, dried their goose quill
pens and shot away in swift birchbarks to the grand council.
Some of these officers travelled a thousand miles; others, at more
southerly stations had not far to go. But in any case their only
carriers were the canoe, the York boat, the plodding oxen or the pony of
the plains.
The council was not usually complete until early July. Then the grizzled
veterans of the fur service sat down to "talk musquash" under the
chairmanship of the Chief Commissioner, and in the space of a fortnight
had deliberated upon the commerce and government of a wilderness empire
and promulgated the specific orders that would control the victualing,
the supply and the trade, the commercial, civic, industrial and
religious life of the vast unplotted north country for another year.
Weighty problems of transport were solved at these historic meetings, so
that the chain of H.B.C. communication might be unbroken; mail packets,
freight and furs traversed the forest leagues and the expanse of
mountain and prairie under "timetables" placed in effect by this
council. And rare indeed was there instanced the loss of a package
of merchandise or pelts--or even a letter--notwithstanding the
extraordinary difficulties of travel, the storm and stress of climate.
Some idea of the plan under which the grand council operated may be
conveyed by the following extracts from the minutes of a typical meeting
of the Factors and Chief Factors held at Fort Carlton, beginning the
first of July, 1878: