Another village began a
few years after at Point Douglas on Main Street, near the Canadian
Pacific Railway Station of to-day, while at St. John's, on Main Street,
was another nucleus. These were in existence when the old order passed
away in 1870, but they are all absorbed into the City of Winnipeg of
to-day. The Hudson's Bay Company, while long attached to its ancient
customs, brought over from the seventeenth century, has fully and
heartily adopted the new order of things. Glorying in the old, it has
embraced the new, and has become thoroughly modern in all its
enterprises. It has been a safe and solvent institution in its whole
history. That it has been able to do this is no doubt, largely due to
the enterprise and modern spirit of its great London Governor, who for
years watched over its time of transition in Winnipeg--Donald A.
Smith--Lord Strathcona of to-day.
When the regime of the Hudson's Bay Company is recalled old timers
delight to think of a figure of that time who was an embodiment of the
life of the Red River Settlement from its beginning nearly to its end.
This was William Robert Smith, a blue-coat boy from London, who came out
in the Company's service in 1813, served for a number of years as a
clerk, and settled down in Lower Fort Garry District in 1824.
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