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Hudson's Bay Company Archives Cartographic Records
(Maps and Architectural Drawings)

The Hudson's Bay Company Archives has the largest holding of fur trade maps in North America. There are nearly 12,000 maps, charts, and plans, dating from 1563 to ca. 1982. These maps are of various media, size, and quality.

The manuscript maps are almost exclusively by Company employees and include many of the names well known to Canadian historians: Samuel Hearne, Philip Turnor, Peter Fidler, David Thompson and Joseph Pemberton. A number of Indigenous people drew maps or provided information to Company employees, especially Peter Fidler. The most famous map of this type is entitled The Different Tribes that inhabit on the East & West side of the Rocky Mountains . . ., by Ac ko mok ki, a Blackfoot Chief, dated 1801 (G.1/25, microfilm reel 11M1). Included in the printed maps are more than fifty from the internationally-known London firm, Arrowsmith. These maps are based on information received from Company employees and R. Seale's Map of North America with Hudson's Bay and Straights, Anno 1748. The only other known copy of this map was donated by the Hudson's Bay Company to the British Museum. A large proportion of maps in the post-1870 period record lands which were available and/or sold, received under the Deed of Surrender. Other subjects include transportation (ships, supply routes and proposed railroad lines), agriculture, urban and resource development and Indian Reserves. The geographical area covered by these maps is immense and includes the vast trading areas of the Company from Labrador to British Columbia, the northwestern United States to the Arctic coast.

Atlases date from 1733 and cover Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Architectural drawings represent the work of some of the most outstanding architectural firms in Canada,  including Burke, Horwood & White, Moody and Moore, interior design firms such as Taussig & Flesch and ship building firms in England, Scotland and North America. Dating from as early as the late 1700s, these drawings include 18th century fortifications of forts around Hudson Bay, department stores, ships' plans and some unexpected items such as the Prince Rupert Golf Course in Edmonton, which the Company operated in the 1930s. The main geographical areas covered are Canada and England. The majority of drawings are blueprints. A considerable number are in manuscript and whiteprint form.

Selected Reading

• Beattie, Judith Hudson. "Indian Maps in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives: A Comparison of Five Area Maps Recorded by Peter Fidler, 1801-1802." Archivaria 21 (Winter 1985-86), 166-175.
• Ruggles, Richard I. A Country So Interesting: The Hudson's Bay Company and Two Centuries of Mapping, 1670-1870. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991.

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