The North West Company was formed in Montreal in 1779 by a group of enterprising merchants and fur traders at a time when fur-trading was Canada's major industry. In 1820 it ceased to exist, having been merged after struggle and bloodshed with its powerful rival, the Hudson's Bay Company. In the forty-odd years between, it had cornered the fur trade of what is today Canada, and its members had explored the entire northwest third of North America. At the height of its power, the Company's empire stretched from the King's Ports on the Lower St. Lawrence to the Pacific Ocean, from the Upper Mississippi to the Arctic.

The story of the North West Company is the story of the Nor'Westers themselves —Alexander Mackenzie, David Thompson, Peter Pond, Simon Fraser, the McGillivrays, the Frobishers, the Pangmans, and many another ambitious and daring 'homme du nord'. Fortunes came to them readily, if at great cost of physical exertion and demands on courage and enterprise. But finally, faced with competition by the Hudson's Bay Company through Lord Selkirk's Red River colony, the Nor'Westers found themselves handicapped by their own greatness. Their empire was too large for the transportation of the day and they were unable to persuade the Hudson's Bay Company to grant them shipping rights through its monopoly-held York Factory on Hudson's Bay. The alternative to continuing the struggle, a struggle which they would inevitable lose, was amalgamation. But this, on Hudson's Bay Company terms, meant, rather, submersion. We are drowned men," said the Nor'Westers.

So ended one of the most gallant and thrilling enterprises in the whole history of Canada. 

From the dust jacket