Hudson's Bay Company

When I was growing up, at almost every family gathering on my mother's side, the story of how we lost the Hudson Bay fortunes would come up, ...sooner or later. We were, we were told, the direct decendants of James Hudson who was a principle of some kind with the Hudson's Bay Company.

We knew this because one of our great great grandmothers, Sophie, lived very well to the end of her life in Quyon, an island on the Ottawa River, on money which she received regularly from England. ..."Then, lo and behold, my great grandmother, her daughter, (both named Sophie), went and signed away all of our rights when two slick lawyers came up to Sudbury sometime in the 1940's".

One of my aunts would insist that James was the son of Henry Hudson even though some of us 'smart arses' would point out there was about two hundred years missing - that Henry had been living in the late 1500's and early 1600's while our James lived in the late 1700's and early 1800's.

In spite of this, and a few other minor inconsistencies, there was no doubt that this was a big part of our family history. It was not until many, many years later that I learned what really might have happened.