Selkirk’s imagination leaps forward. Difficulties? Ah, yes, lots of them! The Hudson’s Bay Company holds monopoly over all that region. And how are settlers to be sent so far inland? And to whom will they sell their produce two thousand miles from port or town? But where would humanity be if imagination sat down with folded hands before the first blank wall? Selkirk takes no heed of impossibles. He invites Colin Robertson to come back with him to meet the Hudson’s Bay Company directors, and he listens to Sir Alexander MacKenzie’s big scheme to monopolize all the fur trade by buying up Hudson’s Bay stock, and he makes mental note of the fact that if stock can be bought up for a monopoly, it can also be bought up for a colony.
At the table of the Beaver Club dinner sit Sir Alexander MacKenzie and Simon MacGillivray.
“He asks too many questions,” says MacGillivray, nodding toward Selkirk’s place.
“But if we spent £20,000, the North-West Company could buy up a controlling share of H. B. C.,” laconically answers Sir Alexander.
“Tush,” says the Highlander MacGillivray, resplendent in the plaids of his clan. “Why should we spend money for that? We can control the field without buying stock. Only £2,000 of furs did they sell last year; and only two dividends in ten years!”
“If you don’t buy control of H. B. C.,” says MacKenzie, “take my advice!—beware of that lord!”
“And take my advice—don’t buy!” repeats the Highlander.
Selkirk goes back to Scotland. By 1810, he controls £40,000 out of the £105,000 capital of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Another £20,000 is owned by minors, with no vote. Practically, Selkirk and his relatives, the Colvilles, own the Company. Sir Alexander’s anger knows no bounds. It is common gossip on what we would to-day call “Change” that Selkirk has bought control, not for the sake of the fur trade, but for a colony. Sir Alexander quarrels violently with my Lord Selkirk, whom he regards as an enthusiast gone mad. MacKenzie turns over to MacGillivray, what Hudson’s Bay stock he owns and again urges the Nor’Westers to buy on the open market against Selkirk.
Not so does the canny Simon MacGillivray lose his head! To the Hudson’s Bay Company he writes proposing a division of territory. If the Hudson’s Bay will keep entirely to the bay and the rivers running into the bay, the Nor’Westers will keep exclusively to the inland country and the Athabasca, which is pretty much like playing Hamlet with Hamlet left out, for the best furs are from the inland country and the Athabasca. Among his own partners, MacGillivray throws off all masks. “This colony of his will cause much expense to us,” he writes from London on April 9, 1812, to the wintering partners, “before Selkirk is driven to abandon the project; yet he must be driven to abandon it, for his success would strike at the very existence of our trade.”