Perhaps nothing signifies the importance of the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada's past than the fact that forty years ago a book publisher was willing to pay Peter Newman an advance of half a million dollars to write the company's history. I recall thinking when I read the news that it must be a misprint; Canadian writers did not get advances that humongous. But there was no mistake. Penguin Canada was gambling that readers understood the drama and the importance of the HBC story and would fork over big bucks to read about it. And they did. 

As the giant retailer shutters its department stores this week and sells off its real estate, I have my own history with the company to consider. My first job as an historian involved research in the extensive company archive, now located in Winnipeg. The Quebec government was making money available to study the history of eastern James Bay (this was the 1970s) before it flooded the hinterland for a huge hydro project. That coastline is precisely where the HBC got its start, in 1670 at a tiny trading post on the Rupert River. My colleague Toby Morantz and I ended up writing a book about the area and the rest is, as they say, literature.

As a result, apart from all the socks and shirts I've purchased there over the years, I feel I owe the now-defunct company a debt. Whether the country does, that's a more complicated question.