The Hudson's Bay Company, while long attached to its ancient customs, brought over from the seventeenth century, has fully and heartily adopted the new order of things.

Glorying in the old, it has embraced the new, and has become thoroughly modern in all its enterprises.

It has been a safe and solvent institution in its whole history.

That it has been able to do this is no doubt, largely due to the enterprise and modern spirit of its great London Governor, who for years watched over its time of transition in Winnipeg--Donald A.
Smith--Lord Strathcona of to-day.
When the regime of the Hudson's Bay Company is recalled old timers delight to think of a figure of that time who was an embodiment of the life of the Red River Settlement from its beginning nearly to its end.
This was William Robert Smith, a blue-coat boy from London, who came out in the Company's service in 1813, served for a number of years as a clerk, and settled down in Lower Fort Garry District in 1824.

Farming, teaching, catechising for the church, acting precentor, a local encyclopaedia and collector of customs, he passed his versatile life, till in the year before the Sayer affair, 1848, he became clerk of Court, which place, with slight interruption, he held for twenty years.
One who knew him says: "From his long residence in the Settlement, he has seen Governors, Judges, Bishops, and Clergymen, not to mention such birds of passage as the Company's local officers, come and go, himself remaining to record their doings to their successors.".