The independent fur traders that have moved…

The independent fur traders that have moved into the commercial vacuum created by the departure of the French from Canada in 1763 have pooled their interests in various partnerships.

Alexander Henry, Peter Pond and Simon McTavish had formed one such group in 1779, a 16-share organization that, for the last four years, has been little more than a loose association of a few Montreal merchants who discuss how they might break the stranglehold held on the North American fur trade by the Hudson's Bay Company.

McTavish instigates a merger of fur-trading partnerships that forms the nucleus of the North West Trading Company.

Although there are historical references to a North West Company as early as 1770, the North West Company is officially created in 1783, with its corporate offices on Vaudreuil Street in Montreal and led by businessmen Benjamin Frobisher, his brother Joseph, and McTavish, along with investor-partners who include Robert Grant, Nicholas Montour, Patrick Small, William Holmes and George McBeath.