Merchant Princes: Company of Adventurers, Vol. 3

Patricia Morley is a professor of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University, an associate fellow of the Simone de Beauvoir
Institute, and author of Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

Over the past 32 years, Newman has published 14 books on Canadian
business history, many of them bestsellers. Fascinated by power, he has
spent much of the last decade on an ambitious history of Canada’s
oldest and most influential business empire, the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Company of Adventurers (Vol. I) and Caesars of the Wilderness (Vol. II)
were published in 1985 and 1987, respectively.

Merchant Princes, the climax of this epic tale, opens in 1870 when the
Company’s feudal empire was “starting to unravel.” Newman begins
with Donald Alexander Smith, also known as “Labrador Smith,” who
hammered the last spike in the CPR. The last frontier was the North. In
pursuit of fox pelts, the Company eventually established more than 200
posts in the Canadian North.

The second half of the book deals with what Newman calls “the HBC’s
boardroom politics, as vicious and fascinating an end-game as was ever
played out in the wild fur country.” It covers Lord Thomson
(Canada’s wealthiest individual) and his son and heir, David.

Newman writes with enthusiasm and intensity. His skill as historian,
biographer, and storyteller mocks those who find Canada’s history
dull.