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Orkney
HBC's Orkney connection
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the HBC recruited many of its servants from the Orkneys, an archipelago of about 64 islands, situated just off the north-eastern tip of Scotland.
Orcadians were favoured as employees by the HBC because, in the words of a contemporary account of 1794, they were "more sober and tractable than the Irish, and they engage for lower wages than either the English or Irish." Service with the Hudson’s Bay Company offered young men, many of whom were as young as 14 when they joined, an escape not only from the grinding poverty of home, but also from being forced into the service of the Royal Navy by the press gang.
By 1799, out of a total of 530 persons employed at the company’s fur-trading posts in North America, a staggering 416 (nearly 80 percent) were from Orkney.
The majority of those Orcadians, who signed the standard five-year contract with the HBC agent at the port of Stromness, did so as labourers and would remain so for the whole of their careers.
By the mid nineteenth century this close relationship between Orkney and the Hudson’s Bay Company was beginning to wane, though it wasn’t until 1891 that the company’s ships finally stopped calling at Stromness on their way to what Orcadians called the "Nor' Wast".
After the expiry of their contracts many men returned to the Orkneys, while others stayed on at Red River. Many of the men married Aboriginal women and started families. Canadian Orcadian descendants now bear their names such as Sinclair, Flett, Spence, Sutherland and Isbister.
