"Newman, Peter C. - Company of Adventures 03 - Merchant Prince" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Peter C)

the Canadian Committee's Winnipeg-based Good Old Boys. At times the
internal struggle was more important

For a chronicle of Simpsons reign, see Caesars of the Wilderness, Chapters
9, 10, 14.
 Xvi

to these memo-warriors than trying to modernize the Company, but the HBC did
expand into oil as well as urban real estate. It captured control of such
significant retail chains as Zellers, Fields and Simpsons. In 1979, Kenneth
Thomson purchased three-quarters of HBCs issued shares-more than anyone else
had ever held-for $641 million cash.
The second half of this book deals with the HBCs boardroom politics, as
vicious and fascinating an endgame as was ever played out in the wild fur
country. Under its new owner, the Bay lost more money than it had netted in
the three previous centuries and came very close to foundering. The drama
of that downfall and subsequent resurrection, revealed here for the first
time, concludes the HBC story and this book. This volume's final section
features the first intimate profiles of Lord Thomson-Canada's wealthiest
individual-and his son and heir, David, who easily rank among the world's,
not just Canada's, most fascinating capitalists.

IN THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS that follow the main text, I have briefly touched on
some of the research trails I followed to complete this book-mainly in the
stillness of the Canadian Arctic and the buzz of the City, London's
financial district, where the Company was born. I particularly remember
being at Moose Factory, near the bottom of James Bay. First scouted in 1671
by Pierre Radisson, it seemed to be populated by ghosts. I spent most of my
time in the Company cemetery, walking among the tombstones and the crosses,
twisted into crazy angles by the permafrost. It was beginning to snow a
little and as I stood in front of a tilted marker that proclaimed, "Sacred
to the Memory of Peter McKenzie of Assynt Scotland, a Chief Trader in the
Service of the Honourable Company," I sensed the spiritual presence
 Xvii

of the fur traders who had lived and died here. I felt them silently
staring at me, their faces like those haunting slashes of pigment Vincent
van Gogh used to portray the Borinage miners: flat eyes, prominent
cheekbones, looks that betraved not a glimmer of duplicity but deep accu-
sation. T~ey were dead men from a dead culture, their deeds and misdeeds
long ago consigned to the dustbin where Canadians store their history.
They were dead men, but thev wanted to know why their lives had prompted
so little attention, why their names had been ignored even in that
crowded corner of obscurity reserved for Canada's heroes. They had, after
all, done everything that was expected of them and more. But the phantoms
quickly vanished, and I walked back through a gathering snowstorm to the
Hudson's Bay store. There I spotted a twenty-dollar bill, with a note
attached to it: "This is to cover the cost of 2 knives stolen from your
store 13 years ago."
That night I joined a burr of Bay men, trading yarns. They were drinking