The Beaver, Vol. 1, No. 10, July, 1921

"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: