author
Pierre Esprit Radisson
d. 1710
A bold and unpredictable figure of the North American fur trade, this French explorer moved between French and English service and helped set the stage for the founding of the Hudson's Bay Company. His life combined wilderness travel, diplomacy, and constant risk in seventeenth-century North America.
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About the author
Born in France around 1636 or 1640, Pierre-Esprit Radisson went to New France as a young man and settled in the Trois-Rivières area. Early in his life there, he was captured by Mohawks and later returned, an experience that gave him firsthand knowledge of Indigenous societies and survival in the interior.
Radisson became closely associated with his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart des Groseilliers, and the two men made important trading and exploring journeys into the lands west and north of the St. Lawrence. Their reports on the rich fur trade of the Hudson Bay region helped persuade English backers to support northern ventures, which contributed to the creation of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670.
His career was anything but steady. Radisson served both France and England at different times, shifting allegiances as politics and opportunity changed around him. He died in London in 1710, remembered as one of the most colorful and controversial frontier figures of early Canadian history.