Hudson's Bay

I got a DVD that contained three episodes of this series from 1959 that I have absolutely no memory of as a kid. Perhaps I was watching something else or perhaps it was simply not shown in the New York City area. In any event this was my first viewing of Hudson's Bay.

Named after the large body of water that nearly slices mainland Canada in half, the Hudson's Bay Company was law in the frontier areas of what eventually became Canada. While the British and French had their rivalry in the east over what was then called Upper and Lower Canada, the areas that became the western provinces were under the control of the Hudson's Bay Company who bought the furs of the trappers of French, British and mixed descent called Metis. They were in fact the only law.

Barry Nelson and George Tobias played a Hudson's Bay company man and a French trapper who did a little espionage work among the trappers who were a closemouthed lot to outsiders. One of the episodes I saw had Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez as Nelson's sidekick and he was identified as a Mexican. I don't think of those folks got as far north as what eventually became Manitoba or Saskatchewan, how the series explained him must have been interesting. But that was an episode I didn't see.

It looked like an interesting show, maybe with a little color cinematography it would have had a longer run. The Canadian woods or what passed for them looked beautiful

You know, I really did try to cut this bargain-basement TV series (from 1959) some serious slack - But, in the long run - I figured that the "Hudson's Bay" didn't deserve more than just a 3-star rating, at best.

As far as this show's 2 main characters go - I thought that the Jonathan Banner character was OK (for the most part). But, on the other hand - The Pierre Falcon character was nothing but a laughable parody of a typical Canadian lumberjack (or whatever the heck he was supposed to be).

Anyway - I felt that this show's episodes really had very little to do with the Canadian business known as the Hudson's Bay Company. (IMO) - This show's stories were all a bunch of mish-mash nonsense that had no real historical relevance, whatsoever.

I have very few memories of this show, other than I used to catch it on Saturday, or Sunday mornings on CBC-TV back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was a Canadian production depicting the rough and tumble fur-trading days of what would one day become Canada, through the eyes of the Hudson's Bay Company. Stories of aboriginals, English, French and Metis trappers, voyageurs and coureurs du bois, as well as those in the employ of the legendary "company."

The series, featuring well-known British actor John Clark and San Francisco's own Barry Nelson (best known as the first theatrical incarnation of James Bond 007 in the 1954 "Climax" TV play, "Casino Royale") romping through the snow, was short-lived in its first run, but lived on in reruns for a long time on Canada's CBC network, where it had its best days. A host of Canadian actors filled out the rest of the cast, with the harsh, but gorgeous Canadian wilderness being the biggest star of the series.

The Hudson's Bay Company had little, or nothing to do with the production of the series and the stodgy old brand went global with Ebay going online in the late 90s. An American investor named Jerry Zucker bought HBC in a deal worth more than $1 billion in 2006, adding more to its rich and long history.