Editing Hudson's Bay Company (section)

=== Indigenous health ===
The medical scientist [[Frederick Banting]] was travelling in the Arctic in 1927 when he realized that crew or passengers on board the HBC paddle wheeler [[Distributor (HBC vessel)|''Distributor'']] were responsible for spreading the influenza virus down the [[Slave River]] and [[Mackenzie River]]. Less than a decade after [[Spanish flu|the 1918 global flu pandemic]], a similar virus spread territory-wide over the summer and autumn, devastating the Indigenous population of the north.<ref name="Jackson-1965">{{Cite journal |last=Jackson |first=Alexander Young |date=15 May 1965 |title=Men and books: Memories of a fellow artist, Frederick Grant Banting |url=https://insulin.library.utoronto.ca/islandora/object/insulin%3AT10193 |journal=Canadian Medical Association Journal |volume=92 |pages=1077–1084 |via=University of Toronto Libraries}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=1925–1949, Historical Timeline of the Northwest Territories |url=https://www.nwttimeline.ca/1925/1928JacksonBanting.htm |access-date=13 March 2019 |website=Historical Timeline of the Northwest Territories |archive-date=5 December 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181205154729/http://nwttimeline.ca/1925/1928JacksonBanting.htm |url-status=dead}}</ref> Returning from the trip, Banting gave an interview in Montreal with a ''[[Toronto Star]]'' reporter under the agreement that his statements on HBC would remain off the record.<ref name="Jackson-1965" /> The newspaper nonetheless published the conversation, which rapidly reached a wide audience across Europe and Australia.<ref name="Jackson-1965" /><ref name="Tester-2008">{{Cite journal |last1=Tester |first1=Frank James |last2=McNicoll |first2=Paule |date=Nov 2008 |title=A Voice of Presence: Inuit Contributions toward the Public Provision of Health Care in Canada, 1900–1930 |journal=Social History/Histoire Sociale |volume=41 |issue=82 |pages=535–561 |doi=10.1353/his.0.0034 |s2cid=144773818}}</ref> Banting was angry at the leak, having promised the Department of the Interior not to make any statements to the press prior to clearing them.<ref name="Tester-2008" />

The article noted that Banting had given the journalist C. R. Greenaway repeated instances of how the fox fur trade always favoured the company: "For over $100,000 of fox skins, he estimated that the Eskimos had not received $5,000 worth of goods."<ref name="Tester-2008" /> He traced this treatment to health, consistent with reports made in previous years by RCMP officers, suggesting that "the result was a diet of 'flour, [[hard tack|sea-biscuits]], tea and tobacco,' with the skins that once were used for clothing traded merely for 'cheap whiteman's goods.{{'"}}<ref name="Tester-2008" />

The HBC fur trade commissioner called Banting's remarks "false and slanderous", and a month later, the governor and general manager met Banting at the [[The Omni King Edward Hotel|King Edward Hotel]] to demand a retraction.<ref name="Jackson-1965" /><ref name="Tester-2008" /> Banting stated that the reporter had betrayed his confidence, but did not retract his statement and reaffirmed that HBC was responsible for the death of Indigenous residents by supplying the wrong kind of food and introducing diseases into the Arctic.<ref name="Jackson-1965" /> As [[A. Y. Jackson]], the [[Group of Seven (artists)|Group of Seven]] painter with whom Banting was travelling, noted in his memoir that since neither the governor nor the general manager had been to the Arctic, the meeting ended with them asking Banting's advice on what HBC ought to do: "He gave them some good advice and later he received a card at Christmas with the Governor's best wishes."<ref name="Jackson-1965" />

Banting maintained this position in his report to the Department of the Interior:<ref name="Tester-2008" /><blockquote>He noted that "infant mortality was high because of the undernourishment of the mother before birth"; that "white man's food leads to decay of native teeth"; that "tuberculosis has commenced. Saw several cases at Godhavn, Etah, Port Burwell, Arctic Bay"; that "an epidemic resembling influenza killed a considerable proportion of population at Port Burwell"; and that "the gravest danger faces the Eskimo in his transfer from a race-long hunter to a dependent trapper. White flour, sea-biscuits, tea and tobacco do not provide sufficient fuel to warm and nourish him". Furthermore, he discouraged the establishment of an Arctic hospital. The "proposed hospital at Pangnirtung would be a waste of money, as it could be reached by only a few natives". Banting's report contrasted starkly with the bland descriptions provided by the ship's physician, F. H. Stringer.</blockquote>