The story of the North West Company founded at Montreal must now be told. The war of 1775-6 had sadly interfered with the trade of Montreal with the Indians up country. Haldimand set to work to help the traders to rebuild it. A report of April 24, 1780, of Charles Grant, one of the members of the North West Company, to Haldimand, reveals the enterprise of the founders of Montreal’s commercial prosperity, thus, that “at all times the trades of the upper countries had been considered the staple trade in this Province but of late years it has been greatly increased, in so much that it may be reckoned one year with another to have produced an annual return to Great Britain in Furrs to the amount of £200,000 sterling, which is an object deserving of all the encouragement and protection which Government can with propriety give to that trade. The Indian Trade by every communication is carried on at a great expense, labour and risk of both men and property; every year furnishes instances of the loss of men and goods by accident and otherwise; indeed few of them are able to purchase with ready money such goods as they want for their trade. They are consequently indebted from year to year until a return is made in Furrs to the merchants of Quebec and Montreal who are importers of goods from England and furnish them on credit. In this manner the Upper Country Trade is chiefly carried on by men of low circumstances, destitute of every means to pay their debts when their trade fails; and if it should be under great restraints or obstructed a few years the consequences will prove ruinous to the commercial party of this Province and very hurtful to the merchants of London, shippers of goods to this country, besides the loss of so valuable branch of trade in Great Britain. In these troublesome times the least stop to the Indian Trade might be very productive of very bad effects, even among the savages who are at present our friends or neuter, who on seeing no supply of goods would immediately change sides and join the enemies of the Government under pretense that the rebels had got the better of us and that we had not it in our power to supply them any more. All the property in the Upper Countries in such a case would become an easy prey to their resentment; and the lives of all of His Majesty’s Subjects doing business in these Countries at the time of a rupture of this nature might probably fall a sacrifice to the fury and rage of disappointed, uncivilized barbarians.”