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“No other company can claim what HBC can,” Baker said in an interview from his New York office. “By telling the stories that we are telling, we are giving some real examples to Canadians of what their great country is all about, and how Hudson’s Bay was a part of that.”

The company was keen to kickstart the campaign in the lead-up to Canada’s 150th anniversary as a country in 2017.

HBC’s history precedes that, incorporated in 1670 as “the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay.”

Baker chuckles at the observation that he has been more passionate about the company’s historical roots than the decades of Canadian executive teams and owners who came before him.

“It is ironic that it took an American to bring out the great Canadian heritage of the Hudson Bay Company,” he said. “It’s sort of funny. But we are very committed in making HBC one of the greatest companies in the world. That is where it should have been sitting all along. I say as an American that Americans don’t really appreciate how different Canada and Canadians are from the U.S. And the cultural differences in Canada have to do with its heritage.”

A spot debuting this week from the HBC History Foundation features wheelchair athlete Rick Hansen, who famously circled the world during the 1980s to raise awareness of people with disabilities and funds for spinal cord research.