Review
From the book jacket: At sixteen, Edward Beauclerk Maurice impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company -- the Company of Gentleman Adventurers -- and was sent to an isolated trading post in the Canadian Arctic, where there was no telephone or radio and only one ship arrived each year. But the Inuit people who traded there taught him how to track polar bears, build igloos, and survive expeditions in ferocious winter storms. He learned their language and became so immersed in their culture and way of life that children thought he was Inuit himself. When an epidemic struck, Maurice treated the sick using a simple first aid kit, and after a number of the hunters died, he had to start hunting himself, often with women, who soon began to compete for his affections. The young man who in England had never been alone with a woman other than his mother and sisters had come of age...
Beyond the Book
A Short History of The Hudson Bay Company
Edward Beauclerk Maurice left the Hudson's Bay Company in 1939 to serve in the New Zealand navy during World War II;
after which he became a bookseller in an English village and rarely traveled again. He died in 2003, as
his book was being readied for publication.
The Hudson's Bay Company is still very much in existence, but with 500 retail outlets spread
across Canada this department store retailer has come a long way from its
beginnings in 1670 when King Charles II of Britain granted the lands of the
Hudson Bay watershed to "the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England
trading into Hudson Bay".
During its first century of operation the Hudson's Bay Company established
outposts around the...
