The Romance of the Far Fur Country - Arctic Canada caught on 1919 silent film

In July 1919, the RMS Nascopie departed Montreal. It carried supplies bound for Arctic fur trade posts.

But the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) ice-breaker had extra cargo on its annual trip. A film crew is on board.

The ship headed north. As they travelled, a cameraman filmed the Nascopie crashing through ice floes.

When the ship anchored, he went overboard, trudging across the ice with a tripod cradled in his arms. A second camera rolled from the deck, recording it all.

The film crew had orders from the HBC headquarters in London. They were to make a film capturing the company's workings and commercial land holdings, holdings that once covered one twelfth of the earth's surface.

But the HBC wanted rid of the land, and were looking for people to settle on it.

And thus a memo from HBC executives - the film should be "advertising the Company and incidentally its lands, without appearing to do so".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16648847

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Arctic
• Canada
• caught
• on
• 1919
• silent
• film

[vap57]

Where/when can I see this in the Greater Toronto Area?

[blazingcatfur]

@vap57 check the link at the end of the description, it will take you to the films homepage, no idea if a schedule is available yet.

[emperoreitan]

When men were men...

[blazingcatfur]

@emperoreitan and women were glad of it...

[Klengenberg1]

and the Hudson Bay Company got rich from ripping off Aboriginals by using a fur press, so that it took more furs to buy rifles, back then the rifles were very long, so the Hudson Bay would press the fur down and when the pressed fur reached the length of the rifle, then the purchase was made. What a rip off!

[wtnworld]

Looking at this footage, one's wish is that film camera was invented at least hundreds of years earlier, if not thousands :-)

[ThisIsAntiWhiteHell]

Before the anti-white pc cult took over and started to forcefully turn all white countries brown.

[cooeypig]

It's hard for Indians to support themselves since the tree huggers made it politically incorrect to wear fur.