With the Anthony Henday ring road nearing completion in Edmonton, we thought we'd share with you some of the history of the man behind the name. This European explorer can largely be attributed to setting the foundations of what would later become Fort Edmonton, and later, the city we all call home. Join us, as we jump back to a time to a place where there were no cars, no trains, no electricity, and the North West was dotted with the tipis of the Cree and Blackfoot, Nakoda and Tsu T'ina, and just beginning to know the hoof prints of the horse and pony.

 

Born nearly 6,800 kilometers away in the Isle of Wight, UK, Anthony Henday was a convicted smuggler who undertook a job as a labourer and net-maker for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort York (York Factory) a fur trading post, on the southwestern shore of Hudson Bay in what is now northeastern Manitoba, Canada. In 1754, Henday agreed to accept a request from the governor of Fort York for volunteers to travel west and explore the western interior of the Company's fur trading domain.

The purpose of this expedition (shown in green above) was to convince inland native trappers to bring their goods and furs to Fort York on the Bay instead of dealing with French inland traders or Cree middlemen. Henday left Fort York in the summer of 1754 with a group of the post's Cree trading partners, led by "Conawapa," who agreed to let Henday accompany them west in the summer of 1754. Henday paddled west up the Saskatchewan River and was introduced to numerous Assiniboine, Blackfoot and even some French traders along the way, suggesting that while he was the first European to record his journey to this part of the interior, Henday was preceded by his French rivals. On the prairie south of present day Red Deer, Henday began writing of the encounters between himself and a group of people his Cree hosts called "Archithinues", thought to be a band of Nitsitapii or Blackfoot-speaking peoples.

 

Despite Henday's efforts and promise of good powder, shot, cloth and fine beads in return for furs and meat, the Archithinue chief was unimpressed with the offer of trade. The journey to the Bay was long, and they preferred to obtain European goods through middlemen such as the Cree rather than alter their lifestyle so significantly. This failure didn't sway Henday's persistence as he continued to try to encourage the Hudson's Bay Company to expand out west and the plains nations journey to the east. This was one of his many trips Henday took around what is present day Saskatchewan and Alberta. In 1765, Henday left the HBC, as he felt that his efforts were largely unappreciated - with French traders distracted by colonial war in the East, their competition was reduced and Henday's employers felt no more need to move inland.

 

Later that century, fur trading competition between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company heated up and finally helped lead to the establishment of inland trading posts on the Western Plains. In 1794, the North West company constructed Fort Augustus near what is present day Fort Saskatchewan. One year later, not wanting to be outdone, Henday's old masters, the Hudson's Bay Company, built Edmonton House merely "a musket shot" away, which served as the ancestor of the Fort Edmonton we know and love.

 

Forty years after their first meeting, the Achithinues' descendants were finally trading directly with the HBC as Henday had once hoped, but it was the Bay which ultimately had to come to the plains, not the plains to the Bay.