Maintaining the institution
02/10/14 04:32
In the fall of 2006, Susan and I had the opportunity to make a visit to the historical archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Winnipeg, Manitoba. These days HBC is a major retailer across Canada with department stores and an impressive online marketplace. Our journey to the archives, however, had little to do with the wonders of the modern retail store. We were participating in a class at the Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre that focused on the history and culture of Canada’s Metis people. Our initial attraction to Sandy-Saulteaux was its unique, listening-circle style of theological education for indigenous leaders of churches in Canada’s remote north country. We were there as much to study the methods of teaching and learning as we were to study the content of the particular class. Still, the subject was engaging and the HBC archives were a treasure trove of maps, photographs, historical artifacts, trade items, beadwork, leatherwork, and other things with unique historical significance.
The Hudson’s Bay Company was not always very public with its archives, nor with its history. In fact for more than 200 years the company didn’t allow members of the public access to any of its collection of historical items and often kept those items in England, rather than in Canada, from whence they had come. Douglas MacKay’s 1937 history of the Hudson’s Bay Company was one of the first documents written by someone who was allowed access to the company’s records, photographs and other historical materials.
An employee of the company, working at its Canadian headquarters in Winnipeg, MacKay spent his evenings and days off reading through company documents and correspondence to produce what has long been recognized as a definitive history of HBC. “The Honourable Company” is mentioned in the footnotes of countless books about the north country.
As a confirmed bibliophile and a student of the north country, it seemed lucky to me when, a few weeks ago, when looking through books on the Internet, I chanced on a used copy of the original 1937 edition of The Honourable Company. It turned out that the book was both in very good condition and affordable. It isn’t a rare book - probably most libraries in North America owned copies of the book when I was growing up. But still it isn’t quite the thing that you will find in your corner bookstore unless you happen to live near Powell’s City of Books on Burnside in Portland.
Reading through the volume, it has been fascinating to find myself swept up in the intrigue of the profiteers and scoundrels who, motivated by the possibilities of huge profits played King Charles II of England off against King Louis of France. There is more than a bit of intrigue in the way they coaxed investors to put down sizable amounts of capital fo underwrite questionable and risky expeditions into predominantly unknown territory in such of what seemed to them to be a vast and inexhaustible supply of fur for the European trade.
The parallels with those who go north in the search of oil today are striking - and frightening.
Add to those sketchy, somewhat conniving early days three centuries or so and you come up with an institution that is a venerable as any other. These days, it is hard to imagine Canada without HBC. Reading MacKay’s now dated history of the company, one cannot help but wonder what those two Frenchmen, Groseilliers and Radisson, would think of our world where a simple HBC point blanket sells for nearly $400 and the Bay website advertises clothing that is far from practical in the cold weather of the north.
I’m not sure you can even buy a wooden or bark canoe from HBC these days. I suspect not.
For the first 250 years of the company, a letter of credit for HBC was the way that outdoorsmen traveled in the wilds of Canada. They didn’t carry cash with them. It would be destroyed by the conditions they faced. They carried letters of credit and introduction that could be used to purchase supplies at the outposts of the HBC. Raisins, flour, baking powder, ammunition, axes, tobacco, tea and mosquito netting were staples that one could expect to obtain from the company no matter how remote the trading outpost. By the 20th century, gasoline was added to the list of supplies that could be obtained.
What interests me as I read the history of the company is how it was transformed from the wild and speculative adventures of a small band of people into an institution upon which an entire nation has leaned on more than one occasion.
On that score, ours is a similar institution. Jesus did not come into the world to found institutions with budgets and buildings and endowments. He came to bring God’s message of salvation to human beings. What would those original disciples think of the institutional church that we so treasure in our generation? How would the respond to the thoughts of payrolls and investments and online payment structures? Would they be impressed by pledge cards and annual reports and newsletters?
Would the work I do be significant to them?
If I, who would be a disciple, find myself too often caught up in the business of institutional maintenance and afraid of taking risks, who is calling the contemporary church to genuine faithfulness? Perhaps we’ve become to afraid of losing our status or position to dare to take risks for our faith.
It is a matter worth pondering in these days.
I remember the reaction of the disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus after their eyes were opened. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” they asked each other. I know what inflames my passion: Bible study and worship and mission. None of those things require an impressive building or boilers or elevators or new roofs.
Still, I have been entrusted with stewardship of an institution with a building and a history worthy of respecting and maintaining. We’ve only got 135 years under our belt as a congregation. I hope that when another century has gone by our history focuses more on the adventures of faith and the mission we’ve shared than on the institution we built.
The Hudson’s Bay Company was not always very public with its archives, nor with its history. In fact for more than 200 years the company didn’t allow members of the public access to any of its collection of historical items and often kept those items in England, rather than in Canada, from whence they had come. Douglas MacKay’s 1937 history of the Hudson’s Bay Company was one of the first documents written by someone who was allowed access to the company’s records, photographs and other historical materials.
An employee of the company, working at its Canadian headquarters in Winnipeg, MacKay spent his evenings and days off reading through company documents and correspondence to produce what has long been recognized as a definitive history of HBC. “The Honourable Company” is mentioned in the footnotes of countless books about the north country.
As a confirmed bibliophile and a student of the north country, it seemed lucky to me when, a few weeks ago, when looking through books on the Internet, I chanced on a used copy of the original 1937 edition of The Honourable Company. It turned out that the book was both in very good condition and affordable. It isn’t a rare book - probably most libraries in North America owned copies of the book when I was growing up. But still it isn’t quite the thing that you will find in your corner bookstore unless you happen to live near Powell’s City of Books on Burnside in Portland.
Reading through the volume, it has been fascinating to find myself swept up in the intrigue of the profiteers and scoundrels who, motivated by the possibilities of huge profits played King Charles II of England off against King Louis of France. There is more than a bit of intrigue in the way they coaxed investors to put down sizable amounts of capital fo underwrite questionable and risky expeditions into predominantly unknown territory in such of what seemed to them to be a vast and inexhaustible supply of fur for the European trade.
The parallels with those who go north in the search of oil today are striking - and frightening.
Add to those sketchy, somewhat conniving early days three centuries or so and you come up with an institution that is a venerable as any other. These days, it is hard to imagine Canada without HBC. Reading MacKay’s now dated history of the company, one cannot help but wonder what those two Frenchmen, Groseilliers and Radisson, would think of our world where a simple HBC point blanket sells for nearly $400 and the Bay website advertises clothing that is far from practical in the cold weather of the north.
I’m not sure you can even buy a wooden or bark canoe from HBC these days. I suspect not.
For the first 250 years of the company, a letter of credit for HBC was the way that outdoorsmen traveled in the wilds of Canada. They didn’t carry cash with them. It would be destroyed by the conditions they faced. They carried letters of credit and introduction that could be used to purchase supplies at the outposts of the HBC. Raisins, flour, baking powder, ammunition, axes, tobacco, tea and mosquito netting were staples that one could expect to obtain from the company no matter how remote the trading outpost. By the 20th century, gasoline was added to the list of supplies that could be obtained.
What interests me as I read the history of the company is how it was transformed from the wild and speculative adventures of a small band of people into an institution upon which an entire nation has leaned on more than one occasion.
On that score, ours is a similar institution. Jesus did not come into the world to found institutions with budgets and buildings and endowments. He came to bring God’s message of salvation to human beings. What would those original disciples think of the institutional church that we so treasure in our generation? How would the respond to the thoughts of payrolls and investments and online payment structures? Would they be impressed by pledge cards and annual reports and newsletters?
Would the work I do be significant to them?
If I, who would be a disciple, find myself too often caught up in the business of institutional maintenance and afraid of taking risks, who is calling the contemporary church to genuine faithfulness? Perhaps we’ve become to afraid of losing our status or position to dare to take risks for our faith.
It is a matter worth pondering in these days.
I remember the reaction of the disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus after their eyes were opened. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” they asked each other. I know what inflames my passion: Bible study and worship and mission. None of those things require an impressive building or boilers or elevators or new roofs.
Still, I have been entrusted with stewardship of an institution with a building and a history worthy of respecting and maintaining. We’ve only got 135 years under our belt as a congregation. I hope that when another century has gone by our history focuses more on the adventures of faith and the mission we’ve shared than on the institution we built.