Bruno Gerussi

 

Peter C. Newman

The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) is a Canadian holding company of department stores and commercial property. It is the oldest corporation in North America, founded in 1670 and currently being liquidated, and is headquartered in Toronto. Wikipedia

I collaborated a few time with writer Peter C. Newman who died in 2023. I read a couple of his books on the Hudson’s Bay Company and I was impressed to find out how this company pretty well made the territory we call Canada today.

For 25 years I worked as a freelancer for Canadian Pacific Limited. I took photographs of their railroads (and the last caboose), airplanes, courier trucks and of executives of Marathon Realty. 

In the late 90s I was dispatched to an interchange near Lytton where CP Rail traded places with CN Rail on the Fraser Canyon. I was given a walkie talkie so I could stop the train crossing on the bridge. I would stop it whenever I could see Toyotas, Mazdas or Datsuns. My photographs were made into large prints and given to the Japanese car manufacurers as gifts. The location showed mountains, a river, and trees.

When I was doing freelance work for the CBC I was sent to Molly’s Reach to photograph the popular program (CBC called these drama) the Beachcombers.

Throughout those years our Vancouver Sun was a fabulous newspaper. I can now report that all the above, and the paper as we knew it, are now gone. The CBC, particularly the radio, has now switched from culture to telling us about the news that our former newspapers ignore.

Around 1530 Spanish bishop Vasco de Quiroga travelled from Spain to New Spain (later called Mexico). On his way he read Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. It so affected him that when he arrived to what is now the state of Michocán he went to every town and suggested that the inhabitants build or make something. To this day Santa María del Cobre makes exquisite copper wear. And Paracho is home to the best guitars in Mexico. In many ways Vasco de Quiroga was a proto communist.

In 1967 I was sent home to Veracruz where my mother lived when I finished my two year conscription in the Argentine Navy. I was onn board a Victory Ship (an improved version of the Liberty Ships) called the Río Aguapey. Henry Kaiser had solved the problem of the German navy sinking all those allied ships on the Atlantic by using a system of modular building where his Liberty Ships from start to finish were finished within a week. Man years later I discovered that my Rió Aguapey had been built in the Burrard Shipyards.

In our province you can buy Cowichan sweaters, peaches in Peachland and wine. Nothing else, as far as I can tell is made or manufactured in British Columbia.

For years I bought Seagull Frames, made of pewter that came from Pugwash, Nova Scotia. They were lovely and I would take these to my family in Argentina as a Canadian treasure. The company was purchased by a US company.

My eldest daughter Alexandra lives in Lillooet. The town's motto is "Guaranteed Rugged". What could they make there with that wonderful expression. And some of us know that if you live in Lillooet and in most towns of the interior you cannot go anywhere without a car. The Lillooet railroad station, a lovely one, is empty. That all mostly began when Premier Campbell sold BC Rail to CN Rail. CN Rail promptly closed it down.

So today, August 16, 2025 I understand that I live in a diminished Canada that has no real Canadian content TV or some of those Canadians films from the past. What do we now do?