The fur trade made Canada

DIANE McDonald (Letters, June 5), makes a fuss about the Queen sporting a fur-trimmed coat in Canada, but I doubt if many Canadians would be offended.

It was the fur trade that made Canada. The great Hudson's Bay Company, founded in the late 17th century - with Royal patronage - and the North West Company of Montreal, that opened up the wilderness. It was a Scot, Alexander Mackenzie, partner in the latter company, who explored the north-west, all the way to the Arctic Ocean, in an epic journey in 1789.

In 1793, he made another hazardous journey across the mountains: the first white man to reach the Pacific coast overland.

He advocated union between the two companies for some years before the merger of 1821, and in the years that followed, the wilderness became civilised. Eventually the united company gave over much of their vast territory to the Canadian government.

If Diane McDonald had to suffer the rigours of a Canadian winter, especially in the prairie provinces, she would be glad to have an entire fur coat, never mind a fur trimmed one.

Donald Whyte, Kirkliston