We know that mining and forestry are the foundations of the economy of Timmins. Four-hundred years ago, however, it was the fur trade.
Timmins Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann says the first trading post in the area was on Gold Island on Nighthawk Lake in 1641, operated by the French.
By the end of the French regime in Canada, there were two main companies operating in the area.
“There was the Hudson’s Bay fur trading company who did the work with the English and there was la Compagnie de l’Ouest, which did a lot of work with the French,” Bachmann recounts. “One was working the Mattagami (River) system, the other one was working the Nighthawk system.”
The English were on the Nighthawk, the French on the Mattagami. They would also wander into each other’s territory.
“So they would set up their fur trade posts and one would set it up a little further down the river to cut the other guys off,” says Bachmann, “because they were dealing naturally with the indigenous people of this area.”
Next Monday, we’ll look at the last of the fur trading posts, and what they contributed to the start of the mining and forestry companies.
