When in the early seventeenth century a few brave French fur traders arrived in Canada they found a forbidding wilderness of rock, bog, lake and forest, with trackless plains and jagged mountains beyond. Trade was the spur that determined its taming and especially the establishment in 1670 of "the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay" — the renowned Hudson's Bay Company, which was to dominate trade for over two hundred years. As the Company set up forts and camps, its traders and trappers ranged over the interior, fighting increasingly fierce and bitter battles with the rival French, and later with competitors from the U.S.A. and eastern Canada.
There was little concern with organized settlement at this time. The mid-nineteenth century saw only a handful of Scots struggling to stay alive in the Selkirk colony, and a few Britons striving to maintain imperial traditions on the lonely Pacific coast. But when the year 1867 brought Canada's Confederation, and the new nation turned a covetous eye on the empty lands beyond the Great Lakes, the opening of the West began to gather momentum.
The next few crowded, chaotic years were marked by a succession of triumphs and tragedies. A full-scale Indian rising against vicious exploitation by traders was averted by a smallpox epidemic that decimated the tribes. The North-West Mounted Police was formed, to end lawlessness in the interior. The Canadian Pacific Railway, conquering massive natural obstacles, spanned the continent to become the longest railway in the world. Louis Riel twice led the Metis in armed rebellion against the flow of settlers from the East. In the Cariboo and in the Klondike men made fortunes in a day, and lost them as quickly.
Canada is a nation thrusting into the future, and her origins are all too often overlooked. Douglas Hill proves that though Canada may be young, the crucial years of her history teem with drama, violence and excitement. This book is a tribute to the adventurers and pioneers who tamed and shaped a wilderness — the heroes of The Opening of the Canadian West.