In 1827 Fort Langley was established under the Hudson’s Bay company, located on the Lower Fraser River.[1] It served as a main fort for the operations of the Hudson’s Bay Company for some time.[2] In 1849 Fort Victoria became the Hudson’s Bay Company’s western headquarter.[3] The trading posts established by the Hudson’s Bay Company would allow for fur traders travelling by land from the interior to have a permanent location at which to conduct business.[4] To have greater access to the inland fur trade the forts established in the North West were built at strategic points along the coast.[5] The post established at Fort Langley was to allow for more trade in the Lower Fraser River region.[6] Fort Langley’s location on the Fraser River meant a rich salmon supply.[7] The salmon would be salted and then exported to other posts in wooden barrels.[8] The land around Fort Langley also allowed for good agriculture production.[9] A couple of years after the establishment, in 1848 Jason Ovid Allard was born in the fort.[10]
[1] B.A. McKelvie, Fort Langley: Birthplace of British Columbia (Victoria: Porcépic Books Limited, 1991): 35; MSS 155, Langley Centennial Museum and Archives.
[2] B.A. McKelvie, Fort Langley: Outpost of Empire (Toronto: Thomas Nelson and Sons Limited, 1957), VII.
[3] Patricia E. Roy and John Herd Thompson, British Columbia: Land of Promises, (Canada: Oxford University Press, 2005), 30.
[4] Walter N. Sage, “Life at a Fur Trading Post in British Columbia a Century Ago,” in The Washington Historical Quarterly 25, no. 1 (1934): 11.
[5] Allan K. McDougall, Lisa Phillips, and Daniel L. Boxberger, Before and After the State: Politics, Poetics, and People(s) in the Pacific Northwest (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018), 65.
[6] Jean Barman, French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014), 67.
[7] Barman, French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women, 73.
[8] Barman, French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women, 73.
[9] Roy and Thompson, British Columbia, 29.
[10] MSS 155, Langley Centennial Museum and Archives.
Fort Langley Storehouse.
Image from Langley Centennial Museum and Archives.
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