Canadian Geography as National Identity: Hudson's Bay Company Place Names and their Aboriginal Counterparts

The fur trade has a distinctive place in the collective memory of Canadian society, influencing national identity in many ways. Specifically, the fur trade has helped to shape the geography of Canada, which is filled with locales that retain the labels "fort," "post," "house," and "factory." This paper will discuss the Hudson's Bay Company's 1928 call for the collection of Aboriginal place names for "all the posts of the country" and will examine the resilience of these places names and their role in creating a Canadian national identity based on the idea of three founding nations-Aboriginal, French, and English.