The North West Company was a fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in what was to become Western Canada. With great wealth at stake, tensions between the companies increased to the point where several minor armed skirmishes broke out, and the two companies were forced to merge.
Read more about North West Company: Before The Company, Beginnings, Frobisher-McTavish Deal, Late 18th/early 19th Century, Forced Merger, Revival, Personnel, Organizational History
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)