Night at the Manitoba Museum: ram’s head snuff mull and replica trading post
Posted February 20, 2025 10:41 am.
CityNews’ visit of the Manitoba Museum continues with a stop at the HSC Museum Collection Gallery.
It’s where generations of Manitoba children experience their first school fieldtrips, and visitors come from all over the world to learn about the province’s nature and history.
The collections is filled with interesting artifacts from when Manitoba was known by many as Rupert’s Land.
HBC MUSEUM COLLECTION
“So the HBC Museum Collection is kind of interesting because it’s a little bit about the company’s history but in fact, quite a bit different,” said Dr. Amelia Fay, the museum’s curator of anthropology and the Hudson’s Bay Company Museum Collection. “It’s not a great representation of HBC history or even fur trade history, but very much what a bunch of HBC guys based in England thought would make a cool museum in the 1920s.”
The Hudson’s Bay Company was established in 1670, though there aren’t items that old in the collection.
“In the early period, HBC wasn’t so much interested in collecting but moreso making money,” explained Fay.
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“In the 1920s, to celebrate their 250th anniversary, they decided to reach out and put the call out for different artifacts that people had collected, and bring them in together as a museum collection … Then it came here to us in the ‘90s. And so it’s just a really neat collection in that it covers coast to coast to coast, and so there’s lots of different things. I always say it’s the collection for everybody ’cause it’s got clothing, it’s got tools, it’s got a little bit of something that would please anybody.”
Included in the collection is a mock trading post to give visitors an idea of different types of trade goods that would have been available.
“Different kinds of furs people would be bringing in – and of course, touchable – for people to touch. And yeah, just kind of a snapshot to give people a glimpse into the past,” Fay said.
The museum’s curator of anthropology says HBC’s history runs deep in Winnipeg.
“It’s just really kind of a hub and a heart of that research, and so it’s a great place for it to land here,” she said.
The collection is one of the older ones at the Manitoba Museum, but Fay says visitors continue to respond to it very well.
“It’s because a lot of the belongings here in the collection are just really stunning examples and they’re presented in a really beautiful way that’s kind of nice for visitors to walk through as they’re experiencing the galleries,” Fay said. “And I think having that collection here has allowed us to re-interpret, too. Thinking about the fur trade and what I knew growing up was very raw, raw exploration.
“And it’s much more critical now, and I think that’s really great we’re engaging with school groups. We’re changing our programming, we’re changing the way we talk about that history to be more reflective.”
Another section of the collection is a replica boardroom from the Hudson’s Bay Company head office in London.
“They’ve kind of re-created it, including using actual pieces from that original boardroom – so these wood finishes around the mantle and around the door are actually from the original board room.
“You can see different iconography, there’s a headdress there, there’s some sort of tomahawks and firearms. So these are all things that folks in England thought would really epitomize the Hudson’s Bay Company over in London. So when that head office was closing, parts of that came with the collection.
“I think that this would be very sort of, stereotypical of what a lot of folks in England would have thought about North America and about First Nations peoples. I don’t think that’s how they would decorate their boardrooms today if that’s what they were going for.”
In the boardroom is a ram’s head snuff mull, which Fay calls “one of the cooler objects in the collection.”
“It’s the head of a ram and embedded in his head they’ve put all the accoutrements for engaging in snuff, which is what they would do in board meetings at the time. So you can see all the little tools, there’s even a rabbit’s foot for dusting off your mustache.”
Part of the collection is a giant boat – the York Boat – which Fay says played a part in revolutionizing the fur trade.
“For some of the big lakes – like Lake Winnipeg is massive – so when you think about some of these smaller canoes, it’s not gonna go so well in that big open lake. So having a big York Boat was a really great way to transport a lot of goods in one vessel.”
York Boats, which were used from the 18th to 20th centuries in northern Manitoba, carried furs and freight to and from remote trading posts.
On display are items that would be found on the boat. Fay says they each tell their own story.
“A cabinet of stencils that they would use to hand-paint on top of the bales, so there was different codes for the post and Hudson’s Bay Company where it was going. They also had these branding irons that they would use to mark things as well, and bale seals. So they had a really good way of tracking their goods, even though it pre-dates computers, they were really good. Between their inventory logs and logbooks and these (bale seals), they were really great at tracking the movement of goods.”
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Fay’s parting words to CityNews on this leg of the Manitoba Museum tour is advice to visitors of the HBC Museum Collection Gallery.
“I think there’s two things they should do when they come to this gallery. Which is look up, because there’s some incredible watercrafts suspended from the ceiling that people don’t always see. And open the drawers. Don’t be afraid to open the drawers. If there’s a handle, it’s meant to be opened.”
