The Hudson's Bay Company is at one time the world's largest landowner, with the area of the Hudson Bay watershed, known as Rupert's Land, having fifteen percent of North American acreage.

From its long-time headquarters at York Factory on Hudson Bay, the company controls the fur trade throughout much of the English and later British controlled North America for several centuries.

Undertaking early exploration, its traders and trappers forge relationships with many groups of aboriginal peoples.

Its network of trading posts form the nucleus for later official authority in many areas of Western Canada and the United States.

In the late nineteenth century, with its signing of the Deed of Surrender, its vast territory becomes the largest portion of the newly formed Dominion of Canada, in which the company is the largest private landowner.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the company evolves into a mercantile business selling everything from furs to fine homeware.

The retail era begins as the HBC begins establishing stores across the country.