Picture This: Hudson's Bay Company Calendar Images and their Documentary Legacy, 1913-1970

Abstract

Between 1913 and 1970, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) produced an annual calendar which it distributed free of charge through its department stores, fur trade posts, and various administrative offices. While quantities varied from year to year, on average the HBC sent out one hundred thousand of these calendars on an annual basis. Calendars, of course, are not unique to the Hudson's Bay Company. Mass-produced calendars first appeared in the United States in the middle part of the nineteenth century, and with advances in the printing trade and distribution networks, they quickly became popular tools in the advertising industry. Now catalogued in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives Documentary Art Collection, the Company calendar is a popular and often-used visual resource. This thesis undertakes an archival analysis of the HBC's calendars by examining the functional context of their creation. In recent years, archivists have been exploring various aspects of information about the provenance of archival records, since this information is essential to the records' care and use. The more archivists and their clients know about the complex contexts which have shaped records, the more meaningful the records will be.