50s .... I was very young in the late 70s when I saw my dad make his last deliveries to the HBC store in Moosonee in James Bay. But our family keeps several photos of mounds of furs that my parents processed in the 60s and 70s ... piles! with a hundred or more furs all processed by hand ... this means weeks of a trapper walking and wandering in the wilderness and covering hundreds of miles on foot, snowshoes and dog team ... then returning all the animals to be processed (we ate most of the meat by the way because it was a way to feed the family at the same time) ... days of skinning animals ... I remember our kitchen reeking of fox, beaver, mink and even wolf with racks drying nearby while mom cooked the meat in a stew. I have fond memories of watching dad deflesh furs on stretcher boards he carved by hand, then tearing pieces of cardboard to stretch the insides of the limbs of the fur. I know it sounds disgusting and even inhumane in this day in age but for us back then it was all a normal part of our lives. And then finally delivering everything to the store for a few hundred bucks ... for work, time, effort and skill that would have cost thousands!
Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity the same greed it was born from
As an indigenous person who grew up under the shadow of this company. As a boy, I saw my trapper father trade his last furs with the company just before the fur trade industry collapsed in the late 70s. Even as a boy I saw how much work my parents put into processing a dozen furs in exchange for not much money. And this had happened to my family for generations!!!
HBC was made possible by directly exploiting indigenous people for 300 years. They basically owned the land where my family lived. Which meant they could do business in whatever way they wanted with my ancestors. They bought furs for the cheapest prices that could barely sustain the lives of the people they paid. Then resold the furs for enormous profit in Europe. They did that for almost 200 years without any regulation or control which meant it built them one of the biggest corporations in the world ...... all In the backs of indigenous people who had nothing much to live on.
Fuck the HBC ...... it's a beautiful thing to see that terrible name taken down and destroyed.
Up to now, the incompetence has met with loss of money, inconvenience and quite a bit of fear and uncertainty.
The longer this incompetence lasts, especially now that hurricane season is about to start ... expect this government incompetence to start costing lives ... lots of lives. Not just from the immediate consequences of serious natural events happening but from the lack of or delayed or mismanaged actions that will happen when relief and rescue efforts will be required to saved lives.
Everyone shrugs off the stupidity right now because it isn't hurting or killing people .... that's going to change in the next few months and expect the US to start getting severely damaged and destroyed, with no help or adequate recovery in sight.
Are you kidding? Dad could have his jacket torn off by hurricane force winds and he'd still be rocking that hot pink T-shirt to block the rest of the storm.
And his son could survive a cold front on the north face of Everest with a hot jacket like that.
You'd run onto the battlefield and when you saw some guy with a big feather hat, puffy shoulders, a dress, bright colours, fancy dress shoes, garters on their legs covered in tights ... you'd break out in laughter and roll around on the ground as Mr Fancypants stabbed you.
That's the thing and something I've noticed for many years and in meeting many Americans.
The majority of Americans I've met in person were good wholesome people and most of the time I couldn't tell the difference if they were American or Canadian (unless they had a strong accent from the American south).
It's when you start talking about politics or religion that things seem to fall apart. There's a strong Christian 'identity', it's certainly not religious ... cult like but not religious.
But in the mix are good natured people with good natured ideas of politics and inclusion .... but the loudest most obnoxious ones always seem to win out.
I've done my best to not paint all Americans as selfish, ignorant, self absorbed, hateful individuals .... but in light of everything that is coming out of the US government, which should represent the ideas and attitudes of a country ... it is getting harder and harder to like America or Americans.
50s .... I was very young in the late 70s when I saw my dad make his last deliveries to the HBC store in Moosonee in James Bay. But our family keeps several photos of mounds of furs that my parents processed in the 60s and 70s ... piles! with a hundred or more furs all processed by hand ... this means weeks of a trapper walking and wandering in the wilderness and covering hundreds of miles on foot, snowshoes and dog team ... then returning all the animals to be processed (we ate most of the meat by the way because it was a way to feed the family at the same time) ... days of skinning animals ... I remember our kitchen reeking of fox, beaver, mink and even wolf with racks drying nearby while mom cooked the meat in a stew. I have fond memories of watching dad deflesh furs on stretcher boards he carved by hand, then tearing pieces of cardboard to stretch the insides of the limbs of the fur. I know it sounds disgusting and even inhumane in this day in age but for us back then it was all a normal part of our lives. And then finally delivering everything to the store for a few hundred bucks ... for work, time, effort and skill that would have cost thousands!