Colin Robertson

Colin Robertson (born July 27, 1783 in Perth , Scotland , † February 4, 1842 in Montreal , Canada ) was a fur trader and politician in what is now Canada.

youth

Colin Robertson was born in Scotland in 1783 to the weaver William Robertson and his wife Catherine Sharp. He first learned his father's trade, but soon escaped from his parents' business and made his way to New York , NY , where he initially worked in a grocery store.

Around 1803 he became assistant secretary at the North West Company (NWC), which he left in 1809 and returned to Great Britain. It is believed that it was mainly disappointment about his professional advancement in the NWC that prompted him to take this step.

Joined the Hudson's Bay Company

Presumably guided by contacts from his time in the service of the NWC, Robertson contacted their major competitor Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in London in 1809 and made proposals to expand the company's fur trade to the area of ​​Athabasca, the domain of the NWC. HBC found Robertson's proposals convincing and offered him employment, but wanted to put off the Athabasca business for a while. That was not enough for him and he moved to Liverpool , where he and his brother Samuel founded a company in 1812 that mainly operated marine equipment.

In 1814, the HBC decided to implement Robertson's plans and recruited him to lead the project. His company should be compensated for his absence through preferential procurement by HBC. Robertson arrived in Montreal in late 1814 and recruited men for his ventures. In the spring of 1815 he was able to set out for 160 people in 16 canoes.

Red River

The way to Athabasca led Robertson first through the area of ​​the Red River Colony , in which the HBC board and influential shareholder Lord Selkirk had started a settlement project in 1812. The project was also an attack on the competitor NWC, which until then with the help of the Métis had equipped its fur trade expeditions precisely in the settlement area and, like Robertson on the way to Athabasca, had to cross the part of what is now Canada which HBC had placed under its administrative sovereignty with the settlement project.

This led to open confrontations, the Pemmican War , and even before his arrival at Fort Douglas , Roberts learned that the HBC administrator Miles Macdonell had been detained by the NWC and taken to Montreal after he had obtained the equipment with the Pemmican Proclamation banned from NWC expeditions and "confiscated" their supplies. Fort Douglas itself had burned down and the settlers driven from the area. Robertson met many of the settlers on his way, and he was able to persuade most of them to turn back, since the strength of his expedition made them more secure.

Once on the Red River, other HBC employees were able to convince Robertson to help rebuild the settlement, and so he stayed when most of his expedition moved on to Athabasca in early August. He rebuilt Fort Douglas and conquered the nearby Fort Gibraltar of the NWC. In November, Macdonell's successor as administrator, Robert Semple , arrived. Although it was again Robertson who prevailed in further disputes with the NWC over the winter until the spring of 1816, Semple claimed leadership due to his administrative office as governor of Assiniboia . Disagreements arose over the handling of MWC supply boats passing the Red River at Fort Gibraltar and Fort Douglas, and Robertson left the Red River on June 11, indignant at Semple's hesitation and indecision. Just days later, Semple was killed in the Battle of Seven Oaks when he tried to stand in the way of 60 NWC employees who were bypassing the forts with their supply canoes by land.

Expedition to Athabasca

Robertson went to York Factory on Hudson Bay, the headquarters of HBC in North America. He wanted to go back to England, but his ship was held up by the ice, and while they were wintering at Eastmain Factory , he learned of NWC charges against him in Montreal. And so he went back to Montreal, and while he was defending himself against the charges that were ultimately dropped, he was preparing another expedition for the HBC to Athabasca. His Liverpool firm had since gone bankrupt, but Lord Selkirk promised to look into it. And so Robertson left Montreal in the spring of 1818 with 110 people in 10 canoes.

On his way to the Red River he met many of the expedition members of 1815 who had moved on to Athabasca under John Clarke. They had been raised by the NWC and after Clarke's arrest the men had dispersed. Many were willing to try again under Robertson, and the expedition grew to 190 people in 27 canoes. But when he arrived in Athabasca, Robertson was arrested. But he was able to persuade his people to stay and to resist the NWC through messages smuggled out of captivity. In June 1819 he was able to flee and wintered with his people in St Mary's Fort in what is now Alberta . On an expedition in the summer of 1820 he was arrested again, was able to escape again, and this time fled to the USA , from where he returned to England.

Association of fur traders

In the meantime, Selkirk had died, and with him the promise to pay off the debts of the bankruptcy of his company. He initially fled to France, but later came to an agreement with his creditors and traveled back to Canada in 1821. The merger of HBC and NWC was just beginning there after the adversaries had brought each other to the brink of bankruptcy with the pemmican war. Robertson became the chief commissioner of the Norway House trading post in what is now Manitoba . For higher tasks he seemed to George Simpson , the new head of the HBC, but not suitable in the now peaceful trading business.

Late years

Madame Colin Robertson ( James Bowman , 1833)

The relationship with Simpson would remain bad for years. Robertson was transferred from trading post to trading post, but advancement within the company was out of the question. In 1831 there was a serious argument after Robertson officially introduced his wife, the mestizo Theresa Chalifoux, to whom he had been married since 1820, on the Red River, which Simpson disliked because of racist reservations about mestizos . Robertson planned to leave the HBC and prepared to move his family to England, where his eldest son Colin was already attending school. However, he then suffered a stroke and was barely able to work for 5 years. The HBC kept him in their service, and from 1837 he returned to his old position.

He then retired in 1840 and ran for the Canadian Parliament in 1841, to which he was also elected. However, he should not be able to fill the office for long, because in 1842 he was killed in a sledge accident.

Web links

• Colin Robertson . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).