title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: For much of the 17th century the French, based on their colony of New France, operated a "de facto" monopoly in the North American fur trade. Two French traders, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers (Médard de Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers), Radisson's brother-in-law, learned from the Cree that the best fur country lay north and west of Lake Superior, and that there was a "frozen sea" still further north. Assuming this was Hudson Bay, they sought French backing for a plan to set up a trading post on the Bay in order to reduce the cost of moving furs overland. According to Peter C. Newman, "concerned that exploration of the Hudson Bay route might shift the focus of the fur trade away from the St. Lawrence River, the French governor", Marquis d'Argenson (in office 1658–61), "refused to grant the coureurs des bois permission to scout the distant territory". Despite this refusal, in 1659 Radisson and Groseilliers set out for the upper Great Lakes basin. A year later they returned to Montreal with premium furs, evidence of the potential of the Hudson Bay region. Subsequently, they were arrested by French authorities for trading without a license and fined, and their furs were confiscated by the government.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Determined to establish trade in the Hudson Bay area, Radisson and Groseilliers approached a group of English colonial merchants in Boston, Massachusetts to help finance their explorations. The Bostonians agreed on the plan's merits, but their speculative voyage in 1663 failed when their ship ran into pack ice in Hudson Strait. Boston-based English commissioner Colonel George Cartwright learned of the expedition and brought the two to England to raise financing. Radisson and Groseilliers arrived in London in 1665 at the height of the Great Plague. Eventually, the two met and gained the sponsorship of Prince Rupert. Prince Rupert introduced the two to his cousin, the reigning king – Charles II. In 1668 the English expedition acquired two ships, the "Nonsuch" and the "Eaglet", to explore possible trade into Hudson Bay. Groseilliers sailed on the "Nonsuch", commanded by Captain Zachariah Gillam, while the "Eaglet" was commanded by Captain William Stannard and accompanied by Radisson. On 5 June 1668, both ships left port at Deptford, England, but the "Eaglet" was forced to turn back off the coast of Ireland.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The "Nonsuch" continued to James Bay, the southern portion of Hudson Bay, where its explorers founded, in 1668, the first fort on Hudson Bay, Charles Fort at the mouth of the Rupert River. (It later became known as "Rupert House", and developed as the community of present-day Waskaganish, Quebec.) Both the fort and the river were named after the sponsor of the expedition, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, one of the major investors and soon to become the new company's first governor. After a successful trading expedition over the winter of 1668–69, "Nonsuch" returned to England on 9 October 1669 with the first cargo of fur resulting from trade in Hudson Bay. The bulk of the fur – worth £1,233 – was sold to Thomas Glover, one of London's most prominent furriers. This and subsequent purchases by Glover proved the viability of the fur trade in Hudson Bay.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: A royal charter from King Charles II incorporated "The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England, trading into Hudson's Bay" on 2 May 1670. The charter granted the company a monopoly over the region drained by all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay in northern parts of present-day Canada. The area was named "Rupert's Land"


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: the first governor of the company appointed by the King. This drainage basin of Hudson Bay spans , comprising over one-third of the area of modern-day Canada, and stretches into the present-day north-central United States. The specific boundaries remained unknown at the time. Rupert's Land would eventually become Canada's largest land "purchase" in the 19th century.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The HBC established six posts between 1668 and 1717. Rupert House(1668, southeast), Moose Factory (1673, south) and Fort Albany, Ontario (1679, west) were erected on James Bay; three other posts were established on the western shore of Hudson Bay proper: Fort Severn (1689), York Factory (1684) and Fort Churchill (1717). Inland posts were not built until 1774. After 1774, York Factory became the main post because of its convenient access to the vast interior waterway-systems of the Saskatchewan and Red rivers. Originally called "factories" because the "factor", i.e., a person acting as a mercantile agent, did business from there, these posts operated in the manner of the Dutch fur-trading operations in New Netherland. By adoption of the Standard of Trade in the 18th century, the HBC ensured consistent pricing throughout Rupert's Land. A means of exchange arose based on the "Made Beaver" (MB); a prime pelt, worn for a year and ready for processing: "the prices of all trade goods were set in values of Made Beaver (MB) with other animal pelts, such as squirrel, otter and moose quoted in their MB (made beaver) equivalents. For example, two otter pelts might equal 1 MB".


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: During the fall and winter, First Nations men and European trappers accomplished the vast majority of the animal trapping and pelt preparation. They travelled by canoe and on foot to the forts to sell their pelts. In exchange they typically received popular trade-goods such as knives, kettles, beads, needles, and the Hudson's Bay point blanket. The arrival of the First Nations trappers was one of the high points of the year, met with pomp and circumstance. The highlight was very formal, an almost ritualized "Trading Ceremony" between the Chief Trader and the Captain of the aboriginal contingent who traded on their behalf. During the initial years of the fur trade, prices for items varied from post to post.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The early coastal factory model of the English contrasted with the system of the French, who established an extensive system of inland posts at native villages and sent traders to live among the tribes of the region, learning their languages and often forming alliances through marriages with indigenous women. In March 1686 the French sent a raiding party under the Chevalier des Troyes more than to capture the HBC posts along James Bay. The French appointed Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, who had shown great heroism during the raids, as commander of the company's captured posts. In 1687 an English attempt to resettle Fort Albany failed due to strategic deceptions by d'Iberville. After 1688 England and France were officially at war, and the conflict played out in North America as well. D'Iberville raided Fort Severn in 1690 but did not attempt to raid the well-defended local headquarters at York Factory. In 1693 the HBC recovered Fort Albany; d'Iberville captured York Factory in 1694, but the company recovered it the next year.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1697 d'Iberville again commanded a French naval raid on York Factory. On the way to the fort he defeated three ships of the Royal Navy in the Battle of Hudson's Bay (5 September 1697), the largest naval battle in the history of the North American Arctic. D'Iberville's depleted French force captured York Factory by laying siege to the fort and pretending to be a much larger army. The French retained all of the outposts except Fort Albany until 1713. (A small French and Indian force attacked Fort Albany again in 1709 during Queen Anne's War but was unsuccessful. The economic consequences of the French possession of these posts for the company were significant; the HBC did not pay any dividends for more than 20 years. See Anglo-French conflicts on Hudson Bay.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: With the ending of the Nine Years' War in 1697, and the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, France had made substantial concessions. Among the treaty's many provisions, it required France to relinquish all claims to Great Britain on the Hudson Bay, which again became a British possession. (The Kingdom of Great Britain had been established following the union of Scotland and England in 1707).


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: After the treaty, the HBC built Prince of Wales Fort, a stone star fort at the mouth of the nearby Churchill River.In 1782, during the American Revolutionary War, a French squadron under Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse captured and demolished York Factory and Prince of Wales Fort in support of the American rebels.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In its trade with native peoples, Hudson's Bay Company exchanged wool blankets, called Hudson's Bay point blankets, for the beaver pelts trapped by aboriginal hunters. By 1700, point blankets accounted for more than 60 per cent of the trade. The number of indigo stripes (a.k.a. points) woven into the blankets identified its finished size. A long-held misconception is that the number of stripes was related to its value in beaver pelts.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: A parallel may be drawn between the HBC's control over Rupert's Land with the trade monopoly and government functions enjoyed by the East India Company over India during roughly the same period. The HBC invested £10,000 in the East India Company in 1732, which it viewed as a major competitor.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Hudson's Bay Company's first inland trading post was established by Samuel Hearne in 1774 with Cumberland House, Saskatchewan.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Conversely, a number of inland HBC "houses" pre-date the construction of Cumberland House, in 1774. Henley House, established in 1743, inland from Hudson Bay, at the confluence of the Albany and Kabinakagami Rivers, was dependent on Albany River – Fort Albany for lines of communication, was not "finished" until 1768. Next, the inland houses of Split Lake and Nelson Houses were established between 1740 and 1760. These were dependent on York River – York Factory and Churchill River, respectively. Although not inland, Richmond Fort was established in 1749. This was on an island within Hudson Bay. It was titled a "New Discovery" in 1749, and by 1750 was titled Richmond Gulf. The name was changed to Richmond Fort and given the abbreviation RF from 1756 to 1759, it served mainly as a trade goods and provisions storage location. Additional inland posts were Capusco River and Chickney Creek, both circa 1750. Likewise, Brunswick (1776), New Brunswick (1777), Gloucester (1777), Upper Hudson (ca. 1778), Lower Hudson (1779), Rupert, and Wapiscogami Houses were established in the decade of the 1770s. These post-date Cumberland House, yet speak to the expanding inland incursion of the HBC in the last quarter of the 18th century. Minor posts also during this time period include Mesackamy/Mesagami Lake (1777), Sturgeon Lake (1778), Beaver Lake Posts.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1779, other traders founded the North West Company (NWC) in Montreal as a seasonal partnership to provide more capital and to continue competing with the HBC. It became operative for the outfit of 1780 and was the first joint-stock company in Canada and possibly North America. The agreement lasted one year. A second agreement established in 1780 had a three-year term. The company became a permanent entity in 1783. By 1784, the NWC had begun to make serious inroads into the HBC's profits.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The North West Company (NWC) was the main rival in the fur trade. The competition led to the small Pemmican War in 1816. The Battle of Seven Oaks on 19 June 1816 was the climax of the long dispute. In 1821, the North West Company of Montreal and Hudson's Bay Company were forcibly merged by intervention of the British government to put an end to often-violent competition. 175 posts, 68 of them the HBC's, were reduced to 52 for efficiency and because many were redundant as a result of the rivalry and were inherently unprofitable. Their combined territory was extended by a licence to the North-Western Territory, which reached to the Arctic Ocean in the north and, with the creation of the Columbia Department in the Pacific Northwest, to the Pacific Ocean in the west. The NWC's regional headquarters at Fort George (Fort Astoria) was relocated to Fort Vancouver on the north bank of the Columbia River; it became the HBC base of operations on the Pacific Slope.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Before the merger, the employees of the HBC, unlike those of the North West Company, did not participate in its profits. After the merger, with all operations under the management of Sir George Simpson (1826–60), the company had a corps of commissioned officers: 25 chief factors and 28 chief traders, who shared in the company's profits during the monopoly years. Its trade covered , and it had 1,500 contract employees.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Between 1820 and 1870, the HBC issued its own paper money. The notes, denominated in sterling, were printed in London and issued at York Factory for circulation primarily in the Red River Colony.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Although the HBC maintained a monopoly on the fur trade during the early to mid-19th century, there was competition from James Sinclair and Andrew McDermot (Dermott), independent traders in the Red River Colony. They shipped furs by the Red River Trails to Norman Kittson, a buyer in the United States. In addition, Americans controlled the maritime fur trade on the Northwest Coast until the 1830s.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Throughout the 1820s and the 1830s, the HBC controlled nearly all trading operations in the Pacific Northwest region and was based at its headquarters at Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River. Although claims to the region were by agreement in abeyance, commercial operating rights were nominally shared by the United States and Britain through the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, but company policy, enforced via Chief Factor John McLoughlin of the company's Columbia District, was to discourage U.S. settlement of the territory. The company's effective monopoly on trade virtually forbade any settlement in the region. It established Fort Boise in 1834 (in present-day southwestern Idaho) to compete with the American Fort Hall, to the east. In 1837, it purchased Fort Hall, also along the route of the Oregon Trail. The outpost director displayed the abandoned wagons of discouraged settlers to those seeking to move west along the trail.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: HBC trappers were deeply involved in the early exploration and development of Northern California. Company trapping brigades were sent south from Fort Vancouver, along what became known as the Siskiyou Trail, into Northern California as far south as the San Francisco Bay Area, where the company operated a trading post at Yerba Buena (San Francisco). These trapping brigades in Northern California faced serious risks, and were often the first to explore relatively uncharted territory. They included the lesser known Peter Skene Ogden and Samuel Black.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: It also operated a store in what were then known as the Sandwich Islands (now Hawai'i), engaging in merchant shipping to the islands between 1828 and 1859.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The company's stranglehold on the region was broken by the first successful large wagon train to reach Oregon in 1843, led by Marcus Whitman. In the years that followed, thousands of emigrants poured into the Willamette Valley of Oregon. In 1846, the United States acquired full authority south of the 49th parallel; the most settled areas of the Oregon Country were south of the Columbia River in what is now Oregon. McLoughlin, who had once turned away would-be settlers when he was company director, then welcomed them from his general store at Oregon City. He later became known as the "Father of Oregon." The company retains no presence today in the portion of the Pacific Northwest governed by the United States.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The Guillaume Sayer Trial in 1849 contributed to the end of the HBC monopoly. Sayer, a Métis trapper and trader, was accused of illegal trading in furs. The Court of Assiniboia brought Sayer to trial, before a jury of HBC officials and supporters. During the trial, a crowd of armed Métis men led by Louis Riel, Sr. gathered outside the courtroom. Although Sayer was found guilty of illegal trade, having evaded the HBC monopoly, Judge Adam Thom did not levy a fine or punishment. Some accounts attributed that to the intimidating armed crowd gathered outside the courthouse. With the cry, "Le commerce est libre! Le commerce est libre!" ("Trade is free! Trade is free!"), the Métis loosened the HBC's previous control of the courts, which had enforced their monopoly on the settlers of Red River.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Another factor was the findings of the Palliser Expedition of 1857 to 1860, led by Captain John Palliser. He surveyed the area of the prairies and wilderness from Lake Superior to the southern passes of the Rocky Mountains. Although he recommended against settlement of the region, the report sparked a debate. It ended the myth publicized by Hudson's Bay Company: that the Canadian West was unfit for agricultural settlement.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1863, the International Financial Society bought controlling interest in the HBC, signalling a shift in the company's outlook: most of the new shareholders were less interested in the fur trade than in real estate speculation and economic development in the West. The Society floated £2 million in public shares on non-ceded land held ostensibly by the Hudson's Bay Company as an asset and leveraged this asset for collateral for these funds. These funds allowed the Society the financial means to weather the financial collapse of 1866 which destroyed many competitors and invest in railways in North America.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1869, after rejecting the American government offer of , the company approved the return of Rupert's Land to Britain. The government gave it to Canada and loaned the new country the £300,000 required to compensate HBC for its losses. HBC also received one-twentieth of the fertile areas to be opened for settlement and retained title to the lands on which it had built trading establishments. The deal, known as the Deed of Surrender, came into force the following year. The resulting territory, now known as the Northwest Territories, was brought under Canadian jurisdiction under the terms of the Rupert's Land Act 1868, enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Deed enabled the admission of the fifth province, Manitoba, to the Confederation on 15 July 1870, the same day that the deed itself came into force.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: During the 19th century the Hudson's Bay Company went through great changes in response to such factors as growth of population and new settlements in part of its territory, and ongoing pressure from Britain. It seemed unlikely that it would continue to control the future of the West.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The iconic department store today evolved from trading posts at the start of the 19th century, when they began to see demand for general merchandise grow rapidly. HBC soon expanded into the interior and set-up posts along river settlements that later developed into the modern cities of Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton. In 1857, the first sales shop was established in Fort Langley. This was followed by other sales shops in Fort Victoria (1859), Winnipeg (1881), Calgary (1884), Vancouver (1887), Vernon (1887), Edmonton (1890), Yorkton (1898), and Nelson (1902). The first of the grand "original six" department stores was built in Calgary in 1913. The other department stores that followed were in Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The First World War interrupted a major remodelling and restoration of retail trade shops planned in 1912. Following the war, the company revitalized its fur-trade and real-estate activities, and diversified its operations by venturing into the oil business. The company co-founded Hudson's Bay Oil and Gas Company (HBOG) in 1926 with Marland Oil Company (which merged with Conoco in 1929). Although the company diversified into a number of areas, its department store business is the only remaining part of the company's operations, in the form of department stores under the Hudson's Bay brand. The company also established new trading posts in the Canadian Arctic.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The medical scientist Frederick Banting was travelling in the Arctic in 1927 when he realized that crew or passengers on board the HBC paddle wheeler SS "Distributor" were responsible for spreading the influenza virus down the Slave River and Mackenzie River. Less than a decade after the 1918 global flu pandemic, a similar virus spread territory-wide over the summer and autumn, devastating the aboriginal population of the north. Returning from the trip, Banting gave an interview in Montreal with a "Toronto Star" reporter under the agreement that his statements on HBC would remain off the record. The newspaper nonetheless published the conversation, which rapidly reached a wide audience across Europe and Australia. Banting was angry at the leak, having promised the Department of the Interior not to make any statements to the press prior to clearing them.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The article noted that Banting had given the journalist C. R. Greenaway repeated instances of how the fox fur trade always favoured the company: "For over $100,000 of fox skins, he estimated that the Eskimos had not received $5,000 worth of goods." He traced this treatment to health, consistent with reports made in previous years by RCMP officers, suggesting that "the result was a diet of 'flour, sea-biscuits, tea and tobacco,' with the skins that once were used for clothing traded merely for 'cheap whiteman's goods.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The HBC fur trade commissioner called Banting's remarks "false and slanderous", and a month later, the governor and general manager met Banting at the King Edward Hotel to demand a retraction. Banting stated that the reporter had betrayed his confidence, but did not retract his statement and reaffirmed that HBC was responsible for the death of indigenous residents by supplying the wrong kind of food and introducing diseases into the Arctic. As A. Y. Jackson, the Group of Seven painter with whom Banting was travelling, noted in his memoir that since neither the governor nor the general manager had been to the Arctic, the meeting ended with them asking Banting's advice on what HBC ought to do: "He gave them some good advice and later he received a card at Christmas with the Governor's best wishes."


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Banting maintained this position in his report to the Department of the Interior:He noted that "infant mortality was high because of the undernourishment of the mother before birth"; that "white man’s food leads to decay of native teeth"; that "tuberculosis has commenced. Saw several cases at Godhavn, Etah, Port Burwell, Arctic Bay"; that "an epidemic resembling influenza killed a considerable proportion of population at Port Burwell"; and that "the gravest danger faces the Eskimo in his transfer from a race-long hunter to a dependent trapper. White flour, sea-biscuits, tea and tobacco do not provide sufficient fuel to warm and nourish him". Furthermore, he discouraged the establishment of an Arctic hospital. The "proposed hospital at Pangnirtung would be a waste of money, as it could be reached by only a few natives". Banting's report contrasted starkly with the bland descriptions provided by the ship's physician, F. H. Stringer.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1960, the company acquired Morgan's allowing it to expand into Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, and Ottawa. In 1965, HBC rebranded its department stores as The Bay. The Morgan's logo was changed to match the new visual identity. By 1972 the last of the former Morgan's stores had been rebranded to Bay stores. HBOG also expanded during the 1960s, as it began shipping Canadian crude through a new link to the Glacier pipeline and on to the refinery in Billings, Montana. The company became the sixth-largest Canadian oil producer in 1967.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1970, on the company's 300th anniversary, as a result of punishing new British tax laws, the company relocated to Canada, and was rechartered as a Canadian business corporation under Canadian law, Head Office functions were transferred from London to Winnipeg. By 1974, as the company expanded into eastern Canada, head office functions were moved to Toronto.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1972, the company acquired the four-store Shop-Rite chain of catalogue stores. The chain was quickly expanded to 65 stores in Ontario, but closed in 1982 due to declining sales. In these stores, little merchandise was displayed; customers made their selections from catalogues, and staff would retrieve the merchandise from storerooms. The HBC also acquired Freimans department stores in Ottawa and converted them to The Bay.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1973, HBOG acquired a 35 per cent stake in Siebens Oil and Gas, and, in 1979, it divested that interest. In 1980, it bought a controlling interest in Roxy Petroleum.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1978, the Zellers discount store chain made a bid to acquire the HBC, but the HBC turned the tables and acquired Zellers. Also in 1978, Simpson's department stores were acquired by Hudson's Bay Company, and were converted to Bay stores in 1991. (The related chain Simpsons-Sears was not acquired by the Bay, but became Sears Canada in 1978.) In 1991, Simpsons disappeared, when the last Simpsons store was converted to the Bay banner.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1979, Canadian billionaire Kenneth Thomson won control of the company in a battle with George Weston Limited, and acquired a 75 per cent stake for $400 million. Thomson sold the company's oil and gas business, financial services, distillery, and other interests for approximately $550 million, transforming the company into a leaner, more focused operation. In the 1980s, sales and oil prices slipped, while debt from acquisitions piled up which led to Hudson's Bay Company selling its 10.1 per cent stake in HBOG to Dome Petroleum in 1981. In 1997, the Thomson family sold the last of its remaining shares.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Hudson's Bay Company reversed a formidable debt problem in 1987, by shedding non-strategic assets such as its wholesale division and getting completely out of the oil and gas business. HBC also sold its Canadian fur-auction business to Hudson's Bay Fur Sales Canada (now North American Fur Auctions). The Northern Stores Division was sold that same year to a group of investors and employees, which adopted The North West Company name three years later.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The HBC acquired Towers Department Stores in 1990, combining them with the Zellers chain, and Woodward's stores in 1993, converting them into Bay or Zellers stores. Kmart Canada was acquired in 1998 and merged with Zellers.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 1991, the Bay agreed to stop retailing fur in response to complaints from people opposed to killing animals for this purpose. In 1997, the Bay reopened its fur salons to meet the demand of consumers.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In December 2003, Maple Leaf Heritage Investments, a Nova Scotia-based company created to acquire shares of Hudson's Bay Company, announced that it was considering making an offer to acquire all or some of the common shares of Hudson's Bay Company. Maple Leaf Heritage Investments is a subsidiary of B-Bay Inc. Its CEO and chairman is American businesswoman Anita Zucker, widow of Jerry Zucker. Zucker had previously been the head of the Polymer Group, which acquired another Canadian institution, Dominion Textile.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: It had been a member of the International Association of Department Stores from 2001 to 2005. On 26 January 2006, the HBC's board agreed to a bid from Jerry Zucker. The South Carolina billionaire financier was a longtime HBC minority shareholder. In a 9 March 2006 press release, the HBC announced that Zucker would replace Yves Fortier as governor and George Heller as CEO, becoming the first US citizen to lead the company. After Jerry Zucker's death, the board named his widow, Anita Zucker, as HBC Governor and HBC Deputy-Governor Rob Johnston as CEO.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: On 16 July 2008, the company was sold to NRDC Equity Partners for just over $1.1 billion, a private equity firm based in Purchase, New York, which already owned Lord & Taylor, the oldest department store in the United States. The Canadian and U.S. holdings were transferred to NRDC Equity Partners' holding company, Hudson's Bay Trading Company, as of late 2008.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In October 2012, the HBC announced a $1.6 billion initial public offering (IPO); Baker planned to use the IPO to allow Canadian ownership to return to the company, and to help pay off debts with other partners. Additionally, the company also announced that it would re-brand The Bay department store chain as "Hudson's Bay". The new Hudson's Bay brand was launched in March 2013, incorporating a new logo with an updated rendition of the classic Hudson's Bay Company coat of arms, designed to be modern and better reflect the company's heritage. Following the IPO, HBC had also introduced a new corporate logo of its own (reviving a wordmark from the original HBC flag), but the new logo was not intended to be a consumer-facing brand.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In January 2016, HBC announced it would expand deeper into digital space with the acquisition of an online flash sales site, the Gilt Groupe, for US$250 million. HBC also announced its expansion into the Netherlands in May 2016 with the takeover of 20 former Vroom & Dreesmann (V&D) sites by 2017. V&D, a historic Dutch department store chain, had gone bankrupt and shut down in early 2016. As of November 2017, the company also expanded retail operations into Europe, including five Saks Off Fifth stores in Germany.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: On 1 April 2018, HBC disclosed that more than five million credit and debit cards used for in-store purchases had been recently breached by hackers. The compromised credit card transactions took place at Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off 5th, and Lord & Taylor stores. The hack had been discovered by Gemini Advisory, which called the breach "amongst the biggest and most damaging to ever hit retail companies". A July 2019 hack of Capital One, which provides HBC Mastercards, did not affect the HBC credit cards or card applications, according to HBC.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In June 2019, a consortium including chairman Richard Baker, Rhône Group, WeWork, Hanover Investments (Luxembourg) and Abrams Capital Management announced that it wanted to take the company private. The group then owned just over 50 per cent of HBC shares. In mid-August, the consortium said that it owned 57 per cent of the HBC shares. By 19 August 2019, however, Canadian investment firm Catalyst Capital Group Inc. said it had acquired enough shares to block the plan. A U.S. company, Land & Buildings Investment Management, the owner of over 6 per cent of the shares, had also criticized the Baker plan. In March 2020, Baker and a group of shareholders were successful in taking the company private.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Aside from Hudson's Bay, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Saks Off Fifth, HBC sold Galeria Kaufhof, Gilt Groupe, and Lord & Taylor by


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: August, 2019. In June 2018, HBC announced it would sell Gilt Groupe to online fashion store Rue La La for an undisclosed sum. In June, 2019 HBC announced its intent to sell the last 49.99 percent of Galeria Kaufhof shares it held to Austrian firm Signa Holding. In August, 2019 Lord & Taylor was sold to Le Tote for $75 million. The remaining stores in the Netherlands were sold by the end of 2019.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: By early September 2019, it was clear that HBC was streamlining its operations, with the sales of Galeria Kaufhof, Gilt Groupe, and Lord & Taylor as the most recent steps. A feature article by Bloomberg News mentioned that CEO Helena Foulkes, recruited in 2018, "had helped improve the bottom line at Hudson's Bay". She was selling assets "to put the company on more solid financial footing" and could then focus on Saks Fifth Avenue and the Bay. On the other hand, Bloomberg suggested that millennial shoppers prefer to make purchases online, or direct from various brands' own stores, and that HBC "has yet to offer something they can't find somewhere else and risks drifting into irrelevance".


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In February 2020, shareholders of the company voted in favour of a plan to become a private company at a special meeting of shareholders. Under the plan of arrangement, the company will be owned by a group of continuing shareholders led by HBC governor and executive chairman Richard Baker. Effective 3 March 2020, the company was delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange, with Richard A. Baker replacing Foulkes as CEO.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: From 2004 to 2008, the HBC owned and operated a small chain of off-price stores called Designer Depot. Similar to the Winners and HomeSense retail format, Designer Depot did not meet sales expectations, and its nine stores were sold. Another HBC chain, Fields, was sold to a private firm in 2012. Established in 1950, Fields was acquired by Zellers in 1976. When Zellers was acquired by HBC in 1978, Fields became part of the HBC portfolio. In early 2019, HBC announced that all 37 Home Outfitters stores would be phased out by year end.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In early 2017, the Hudson's Bay Company made an overture to Macy's for a potential takeover of the U.S. department store chain. Later, HBC also considered a purchase of Neiman Marcus Group Inc. It did not proceed with either deal.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: On March 16, 2022, it was announced that HBC and Sycamore Partners were preparing bids to buy Kohl's.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In September 2011, the HBC announced that it would sell the majority of the Zellers leases for $1.825 billion to the U.S.-based retailer Target Corporation and shutter all of their remaining locations by early 2013. Target used the acquisition of this real estate as a means to enable its entry in the Canadian market. HBC used some of the proceeds to pay down debt and to invest in growing its Hudson's Bay and Lord & Taylor banners. In January 2013, it was confirmed that three Zellers locations, re-purposed as discount department stores for The Bay and Home Outfitters, would remain open. The Target Canada chain folded in 2015; the leases were subsequently returned to landlords or re-sold to other retailers. Zellers was still owned by HBC as two remaining stores following the sale of its lease portfolio to Target Canada in 2011. By September 2019, the re-purposed Toronto and Ottawa Zellers locations were still operating as discount department stores.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In August 2022, the Hudson's Bay Company announced it would be reviving the Zellers brand through online shopping and physical locations in 2023.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: On 24 January 2012, the "Financial Post" reported that Richard Baker (owner of NDRC and governor of Hudson's Bay Company) had dissolved Hudson's Bay Trading Company and that the HBC would now also operate the Lord & Taylor chain. At the time, the company was run by president Bonnie Brooks. Baker remained governor and CEO of the business, and Donald Watros stayed on as chief operating officer.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 2018, HBC in a joint venture sold the building that housed its flagship Lord & Taylor store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to WeWork Property Advisors for $850 million. WeWork was set to occupy the uppermost floors of the building, with the rest of the building remaining a flagship space for Lord & Taylor. The deal also included the use of floors of certain HBC-owned department stores in New York, Toronto, Vancouver and Germany as WeWork's shared office workspaces.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In August 2019, HBC announced that it would sell their Lord & Taylor business to Le Tote Inc., which was to pay in cash when the deal closes (probably before year end 2019) and an additional two years later. HBC was to get a 25 per cent equity stake in Le Tote. The buyer would retain the stores' inventory, with an estimated value of . The deal, expected to close before year end, required HBC to pay the stores' rent for at least three years, leading one news report to describe it as "Not a clean exit". The liability to HBC for the rents was estimated at cash per year.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: On 29 July 2013, Hudson's Bay Company announced that it would buy Saks, Inc., operator of the U.S. Saks Fifth Avenue brand, for US$2.9 billion, or $16 per share. The merger was completed on 3 November 2013. The company also stated that as a result of the purchase, Canadian consumers would see Saks stores arriving in their country soon. After the purchase was finalized, HBC had a net loss of $124.2 million in the 2013 3Q due to the cost of the purchase and promotions.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: HBC had 135 acquired the German department store chain Galeria Kaufhof and its Belgian subsidiary from Metro Group in September 2015 for .


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: On 1 November 2017, HBC received an unsolicited offer from Austrian firm Signa Holding for Kaufhof and other real estate. An unnamed source told CNBC that the value of the offer was approximately 3 billion euros. This information on the offer was also reiterated in a press release by activist shareholder Land & Buildings Investment Management, which urged HBC to accept the offer; the company replied that the offer was incomplete and did not provide indication of financing for the deal. In late 2018, Galeria Kaufhof and Karstadt merged as part of a spin off.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: HBC announced its intent to sell the last 49.99 percent of Galeria Kaufhof shares it held to Austrian firm Signa Holding in June 2019. The sale of the real estate in Germany had gained US$1.5 billion (€1 billion) for HBC. At that time, HBC still had a retail operation in the Netherlands, using the Vroom & Dreesmann locations it had purchased in 2017. On 31 August 2019, the company announced that all 15 of those stores would be sold by year end.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The HBC is diversified into joint ventures and other types of business products. The HBC has credit card, mortgage, and personal insurance branches. These other products and services are joint partnerships with other corporations. The HBC also has other HBC Rewards corporate partners such as: Imperial Oil/Esso, M&M Meat Shops, Chapters/Indigo Books, Kelsey's/Montana's Restaurants, Thrifty Car Rental, Cineplex Entertainment Theatres, etc. HBC Rewards points can be redeemed in house or into corporate partners' gift cards and certificates. Points can also be converted to Air Miles.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The HBC is involved in community and charity activities. The HBC Rewards Community Program raises funds for community causes. The HBC Foundation is a charity agency involved in social issues and service. The HBC used to sponsor the annual HBC Run for Canada, a series of public-participation runs and walks held across the country on Canada Day to raise funds for Canadian athletes. The company discontinued this event in 2009.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The HBC was the official outfitter of clothing for members of the Canadian Olympic team in 1936, 1960, 1964, 1968, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. The sponsorship has been renewed through 2020. Since the late 2000s, HBC has used its status as the official Canadian Olympics team outfitter to gain global exposure, as part of a turnaround plan that included shedding under-performing brands and luring new high-end brands.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: On 2 March 2005, the company was announced as the new clothing outfitter for the Canadian Olympic team, in a $100 million deal, providing apparel for the 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012 Games, having outbid the existing Canadian Olympic wear-supplier, Roots Canada, which had supplied Canada's Olympic teams from 1998 to 2004. The Canadian Olympic collection is sold through Hudson's Bay (and Zellers until 2013 when the Zellers leases were sold to Target Canada).


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: HBC's 2006 Winter Olympics and 2008 Summer Olympics uniforms and toques received a mixed reception for their multicoloured stripes (green, red, yellow, blue) which seemed to be not-so-subtle advertising for HBC rather than representing the Canadian Olympic team's traditional colours of red and white (with black as a secondary), in contrast to well-received Root's 1998 collection with its trendy red letter jackets and Poor Boy caps. HBC produced 80 per cent to 90 per cent of their Olympic clothes in China which was criticized, as Roots ensured that the Olympic clothes were made in Canada using Canadian material.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: HBC's apparel for the 2010 Winter Olympics held in Vancouver proved to be extremely successful, in part because Canada was the host country and their athletes had a record medal haul. The "Red Mittens" (red-and-white mittens featuring a large maple leaf) that were sold for , with one-third of the proceeds going to the Canadian Olympic Committee, proved very popular, as were the "Canada" hoodies.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The HBC's 2010 Winter Olympics apparel was also controversial due to a knitted, machine-made sweater that looked like a Cowichan sweater. After a meeting between HBC representatives and Cowichan Tribes, a compromise was made between the parties; knitters would have an opportunity to sell their sweaters at the downtown Vancouver HBC store, alongside the HBC imitations.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Lord Sebastian Coe, chairman of the 2012 London Olympic Games Organizing Committee, who attended the Vancouver Olympics, noted that the Canadians were passionate in embracing the Games with their "Canada" hoodies and their red mittens (of which 2.6 million pairs sold that year). HBC has continued to produce these red mittens for subsequent Olympic Games.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The legacy of the HBC has been maintained in part by the detailed record-keeping and archiving of material by the company. Before 1974, the records of the HBC were kept in the London office headquarters. The HBC opened an archives department to researchers in 1931. In 1974, Hudson's Bay Company Archives (HBCA) were transferred from London and placed on deposit with the Manitoba archives in Winnipeg. The company granted public access to the collection the following year.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: At the time of the donation, the appraised value of the records was nearly $60 million. A foundation, Hudson's Bay Company History Foundation funded through the tax savings resulting from the donation, was established to support the operations of the HBC Archive as a division of the Archives of Manitoba, along with other activities and programs. More than of filed documents and hundreds of microfilm reels are now stored in a special climate-controlled vault in the Manitoba Archives Building.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In 2007, Hudson's Bay Company Archives became part of the United Nations "Memory of the World Programme" project, under UNESCO. The records covered the HBC history from the founding of the company in 1670. The records contained business transactions, medical records, personal journals of officials, inventories, company reports, etc.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In the 18th and 19th centuries, Hudson's Bay Company operated with a very rigid employee hierarchy. This hierarchy essentially broke down into two levels; the officers and the servants. Comprising the officers were the factors, masters and chief traders, clerks and surgeons. The servants were the tradesmen, boatmen, and labourers. The officers essentially ran the fur trading posts. They had many duties which included supervising the workers in their trade posts, valuing the furs, and keeping trade and post records. In 1821, when Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company merged, the hierarchy became even stricter and the lines between officers and servants became virtually impossible to cross. Officers in charge of individual trading posts had much responsibility because they were directly in charge of enforcing the policies made by the governor and committee (the board) of the company. One of these policies was the price of particular furs and trade goods. These prices were called the Official and Comparative Standards. Made-Beaver, the quality measurement of the pelt, was the means of exchange used by Hudson's Bay Company to define the Official and Comparative Standards. Because the governor was stationed in London, England, they needed to have reliable officers managing the trade posts halfway around the world. Because the fur trade was a very dynamic market, HBC needed to have some form of flexibility when dealing with prices and traders. Price fluctuation was deferred to the officers in charge of the trade posts, and the head office recorded any difference between the company's standard and that set by the individual officers. Overplus, or any excess revenue gained by officers, was strictly documented to insure that it was not being pocketed and taken from the company. This strict yet flexible hierarchy exemplifies how Hudson's Bay Company was able to be so successful while still having its central management and trade posts located so far apart.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: In the 19th century, career progression for officers, together referred to as the Commissioned Gentlemen, was to enter the company as a fur trader. Typically, they were men who had the capital to invest in starting up their trading. They sought to be promoted to the rank of Chief Trader. A Chief Trader would be in charge of an individual post and was entitled to one share of the company's profits. Chief Factors sat in council with the Governors and were the heads of districts. They were entitled to two shares of the company's profits or losses. The average income of a Chief Trader was £360 and that of a Chief Factor was £720.


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: Under the charter establishing Hudson's Bay Company, the company was required to give two elk skins and two black beaver pelts to the English king, then Charles II, or his heirs, whenever the monarch visited Rupert's Land. The exact text from the 1670 Charter reads:


title: Hudson's Bay Company

text: The ceremony was first conducted with the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII) in 1927, then with King George VI in 1939, and last with his daughter, Queen Elizabeth II in 1959 and 1970. On the last such visit, the pelts were given in the form of two live beavers, which the Queen donated to the Winnipeg Zoo in Assiniboine Park. However, when the company permanently moved its headquarters to Canada, the Charter was amended to remove the rent obligation. Each of the four "rent ceremonies" took place in or around Winnipeg.


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: Lorene Scafaria (born 1978) is an American filmmaker, playwright, musician, and former actress. She wrote and directed the films "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" (2012), "The Meddler" (2015), and "Hustlers" (2019), in addition to writing the film "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" (2008).


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: Scafaria was born in 1978 in Holmdel, New Jersey, the daughter of Gail and Joseph R. Scafaria (1939–2009). Her mother is half Canadian, while her father was an Italian immigrant from Gioia Tauro. She has a brother named Vincent. She first became interested in writing when she began writing a report on a fake book once a month to win Pizza Hut gift certificates from her school. By the age of 17, she had written and staged her first play in Red Bank, New Jersey. After graduating from Holmdel High School in 1995, she attended Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania; after being unable to afford Lafayette's tuition, she transferred to Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey. She graduated from Montclair with a BA in English with a minor in theater.


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: After moving to New York City, Scafaria wrote and staged a play at the Producer's Club Theatre called "That Guy and Others Like Him", in which she also played a role. She also had a small role in the acclaimed short film "Bullet in the Brain", which won awards at nine festivals and was produced by CJ Follini. Her writing agent had still yet to find her a job, so she took on more acting roles, appearing in many theater productions in addition to films such as "Big Helium Dog" and "A Million Miles". She sent out queries to twenty different agents to seek representation, one of whom replied and asked her to move from New York to Los Angeles. Although she did not anticipate real success with the agent, she moved to Los Angeles and became roommates with screenwriter Bryan Sipe, whom she had previously met while making a film in her native New Jersey. Neither of their work was considered "commercial" enough by studios, so they paired up to write a children's adventure film called "Legend Has It". Revolution Studios bought the screenplay but asked for a re-write which Scafaria described as "far less interesting", and the project was ultimately shelved.


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: In early 2005, Scafaria was hired by Focus Features to adapt Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's book "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" into a film of the same name. The screenplay was her ninth, but her first adaptation. Scafaria said to "Moviemaker" about the source material, "I grew up in suburban New Jersey, so I immediately identified with the characters, especially Norah. Everything from feeling uncomfortable in my own skin to having a father who's larger than life (even if only in your mind), her plight really spoke to me and seemed like it would speak to a lot of young girls. It wasn't hard to get inside the characters' heads—the authors' voices are so strong. Scafaria goes onto to say the film "Before Sunrise" was a big inspiration for the structure of the film. Scafaria wanted to bring a nostalgic take on the teen comedy claiming "it was just a real challenge to kind of bring it back to those movies that I grew up on in the '80s, John Hughes movies and Cameron Crowe."


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: Scafaria is good friends with fellow "Nick & Norah" writers Diablo Cody and Liz Meriwether, with whom she collaborates in a writing group they call the "Fempire". In 2012, Scafaria and the "Fempire" received the Athena Film Festival Award for Creativity and Sisterhood. She wrote the Iraq War docudrama "Sweet Relief" for Paramount Pictures and "The Mighty Flynn", a spec script which she set up at Warner Brothers. She has also written "Man and Wife", which Gabriele Muccino is attached to direct.


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: During the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, Scafaria recorded an album called "Garden Party", featuring original songs she sang and played on the piano. The 2009 film "Whip It!" features the song "28" in the closing credits. She released her second album, "Laughter and Forgetting", on April 1, 2010.


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: In 2009, Mandate Pictures picked up Scafaria's script "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World", a romantic comedy that focused on one man's quest for a meaningful connection amid the "end of days". The film marked the directorial debut for Scafaria, and was released in June 2012. In an interview with FF2 Media's Jan Huttner, Scafaria conveyed the depth and allure of the apocalypse concept: "Two people at the end of the world—all the chaos that's around them that they're sort of wheeling through—and obviously some people are just mowing their lawn and other people are doing heroin... but there's something to me that becomes even more romantic, and that's what I was excited to explore and see." This becomes a part of her style, adaptations, and personal feelings because she states "I love relationships. I love intimate stories about people; whether it's a guy and a girl or whatever it is, I like intimate stories of people and how they relate to each other".


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: In 2015, Scafaria directed the comedy-drama "The Meddler" based on her own script. The film tells the story of a mother and daughter trying to move on with life after the loss of their husband and father. Scafaria said to the "New York Times", "There's a reason that it's all from Marnie's perspective because I never wanted to get a break from her. More than anything I wanted it to inspire empathy from people who might find themselves in this situation, whether it's through loss or some other circumstance that creates strife. Once I started showing people the script, that there was something so relatable about being the adult child of someone and trying to stay best friends."


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: In 2019, Scafaria wrote and directed the crime drama film "Hustlers", based on a 2015 "New York" magazine article by Jessica Pressler. The film is about a woman who was born to Cambodian immigrant refugees and was deserted and forced to stay with her grandparents who tried her hardest to get by. The film was a critical and commercial success. Scafaria said to "Vox" on the real story, "There are a lot of movies that I think have touched upon these themes—"The Wolf of Wall Street" or movies like "The Big Short"—which explain [financial downturns] from the bullpen. But I'm really interested in seeing the impact that the 2008 recession had on these women who worked in Wall Street's backyard." When mentioning the relationship between Destiny and Ramona the writer and director said, "It felt like there was something more in between the lines – the story of these two women who became friends and formed this business together, and then here they are being interviewed separately years later." In an Oprah Daily 2019 Interview by Brie Schwartz with Roselyn Keo, the real-life stripper who went through the events of the film told her side of the story and how accurate it was. With a "The Wolf of Wall Street" like theme dealing with excess and greed, it made sense for the manipulation the women do to get into sleazy men's pockets reached the heights they did with the business mentality she said was "The girls were looking for money, and the guys were looking for love. Supply and demand". Scafaria wrote a glamorous and cohesive story that remained true to the attitude of the characters proving great skills in emotional depth and authenticity as a writer and director.


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: In 2021, Scafaria directed the "Succession" episode "Too Much Birthday", for which she received a Directors Guild of America Award nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series as well as a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series.


title: Lorene Scafaria

text: Scafaria is in a relationship with musical comedian Bo Burnham, with whom she lives in Los Angeles. They began dating in 2013. Burnham's special "" was dedicated to her and includes the text "for lor, for everything" in the end credits.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: The Russian Federation is known to possess or have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons. It is one of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Russia possesses a total of 5,977 nuclear warheads as of 2022, the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world; the second-largest stockpile is the United States' 5,428 warheads. Russia's deployed missiles (those actually ready to be launched) number about 1,588, second to the United States' 1,644. The remaining weapons are either in reserve stockpiles, or have been retired and are slated for dismantling. Russia's predecessor state, the Soviet Union, reached a peak stockpile of about 45,000 nuclear warheads in 1986. The number of weapons Russia may possess is currently controlled by the bilateral New START treaty with the United States.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol—prohibiting the use of biological and chemical weapons—on April 5, 1928, with reservations that were later dropped on January 18, 2001. Russia is also party to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. The Soviet biological weapons program violated the Biological Weapons Convention and was the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated program of its kind. At its peak, the program employed up to 65,000 people.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Despite being a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia has continued to hold chemical weapons. In 1997, Russia declared an arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons, which it worked in part to decrease. Its stock of weapons was declared destroyed in 2017. The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018 and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in 2020, both carried out by Russia, revealed that the country maintained an illicit chemical weapons program.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: At the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet nuclear weapons were deployed in four of the new republics: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. In May 1992, these four states signed the Lisbon Protocol, agreeing to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, with Russia the successor state to the Soviet Union as a nuclear state, and the other three states joining as non-nuclear states.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Ukraine agreed to give up its weapons to Russia, in exchange for guarantees of Ukrainian territory from Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, known as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. China and France also made statements in support of the memorandum.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: The threat of nuclear warfare was a persistent and terrifying threat during the Cold War. At its height, the Soviet Union and United States each mustered tens of thousands of warheads, under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. By the 1980s, both the United States and Soviet Union sought to reduce the number of weapons the other was fielding. This led to the opening of arms reduction talks in 1982.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: This culminated in the signing of the START I treaty in 1991: the first nuclear arms reduction treaty between the two global powers. This first treaty limited the number of deployed warheads in each nation to 6,000, nearly halving the prior 10,000 to 12,000 being fielded in 1991. The considerable success of START I, combined with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, led to the START II treaty. Russia never ratified the treaty, and it did not go into effect. An attempted START III was attempted but could not get past negotiations.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Instead, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty was passed in 2002, capping warheads at 2,200. The current limitations stem from the New START treaty, ratified in 2010. It limits each side to 1,550 weapons. Nuclear bombers only count as one weapon each, even though they may carry up to 20, so the actual limit on the countries is slightly higher. The treaty is in force through to 2026.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: After U.S. President George W. Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Russia responded by building-up their nuclear capabilities, in such a way as to counterbalance U.S. capabilities. Russia decided not to sign the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted on 7 July 2017 by 122 States. Most analysts agree that Russia's nuclear strategy under Putin eventually brought it into violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (although this is not confirmed).


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: According to Russian officials, the American decision to deploy the missile defense system in Europe was a violation of the treaty. U.S. President Donald Trump announced on 20 October 2018 that the U.S. would no longer consider itself bound by the treaty's provisions, raising nuclear tensions between the two powers.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: The exact number of nuclear warheads is a state secret and is therefore a matter of guesswork. As of 2022, the Federation of American Scientists estimates that Russia possesses 5,977 nuclear weapons, while the United States has 5,428; Russia and the U.S. each have about 1,600 active deployed strategic nuclear warheads. Russia's stockpile is growing in size, while the United States' is shrinking. Russia has six nuclear missile fields in Kozelsk, Tatishchevo, Uzhur, Dombarovskiy, Kartalay, and Aleysk; nuclear missile submarines patrolling from three naval bases at Nerpich'ya, Yagel'Naya, and Rybachiy; and nuclear bombers at Ukrainka and Engels air bases.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: The RS-28 Sarmat (Russian: РС-28 Сармат; NATO reporting name: SATAN 2), is a Russian liquid-fueled, MIRV-equipped, super-heavy thermonuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile in development by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau since 2009, intended to replace the previous R-36 missile. Its large payload would allow for up to 10 heavy warheads or 15 lighter ones, or a combination of warheads and massive amounts of countermeasures designed to defeat anti-missile systems. It was heralded by the Russian military as a response to the U.S. Prompt Global Strike.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: In 2015, information emerged that Russia may be developing a new nuclear torpedo, the Status-6 Ocean Multipurpose System, codenamed "Kanyon" by Pentagon officials. This weapon is designed to create a tsunami wave up to 500m tall that will radioactively contaminate a wide area on an enemy coasts with cobalt-60, and to be immune to anti-missile defense systems such as laser weapons and railguns that might disable an ICBM. Two potential carrier submarines, the Project 09852 "Belgorod", and the Project 09851 "Khabarovsk", are new boats laid down in 2012 and 2014 respectively.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Status 6 appears to be a deterrent weapon of last resort. It appears to be a torpedo-shaped robotic mini-submarine, that can travel at speeds of . More recent information suggests a top speed of , with a range of and a depth maximum of . This underwater drone is cloaked by stealth technology to elude acoustic tracking devices.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: During an annual state-of-the-nation address given on March 1, 2018, President Vladimir Putin publicly claimed that Russia was now in possession of several new classes of nuclear weapons, including some with capabilities previously speculated to exist. Putin discussed several new or upgraded weapons, including a hypersonic glide vehicle known as the Avangard, capable of performing sharp maneuvers while traveling at 20 times the speed of sound making it "absolutely invulnerable for any missile defense system."


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Putin discussed the existence of a nuclear powered underwater torpedo and a nuclear powered cruise missile (9M730 Burevestnik), both with effectively unlimited range. He discussed that Russia had tested a new class of traditional ICBM called the Sarmat, which expanded upon the range and carrying capability of the Soviet-era Satan ICBM. Animations of these weapons were shown in front of the live and televised audience. Putin suggested that an online poll be conducted to give them official public names.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: According to a Russian military doctrine stated in 2010, nuclear weapons could be used by Russia "in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies, and also in case of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened". Most military analysts believe that, in this case, Russia would pursue an 'escalate to de-escalate' strategy, initiating limited nuclear exchange to bring adversaries to the negotiating table. Russia will also threaten nuclear conflict to discourage initial escalation of any major conventional conflict.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: After the Korean War, the Soviet Union transferred nuclear technology and weapons to the People's Republic of China as an adversary of the United States and NATO. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, "Khrushchev's nuclear-proliferation process started with Communist China in April 1955, when the new ruler in the Kremlin consented to supply Beijing a sample atomic bomb and to help with its mass production. Subsequently, the Soviet Union built all the essentials of China's new military nuclear industry."


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Russia is one of the five "Nuclear Weapons States" (NWS) under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which Russia ratified (as the Soviet Union) in 1968.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of Soviet-era nuclear warheads remained on the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. Under the terms of the Lisbon Protocol to the NPT, and following the 1995 Trilateral Agreement between Russia, Belarus, and the US, these were transferred to Russia, leaving Russia as the sole inheritor of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. It is estimated that the Soviet Union had approximately 45,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled at the time of its collapse.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed for a warming of relations with NATO. Fears of a nuclear holocaust lessened. In September 1997, the former secretary of the Russian Security Council Alexander Lebed claimed 100 "suitcase sized" nuclear weapons were unaccounted for. He said he was attempting to inventory the weapons when he was fired by President Boris Yeltsin in October 1996. Indeed, several US politicians have expressed worries and promised legislation addressing the threat.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: There were allegations that Russia contributed to the North Korean nuclear program, selling it the equipment for the safe storage and transportation of nuclear materials. Nevertheless, Russia has condemned North Korean nuclear tests since then. The Russian Federation has also wider commercial interests in selling the nuclear technology to India and Iran, reaching understanding memorandums in training their technicians in their respected nuclear programs. Russia is allegedly making efforts to build its influential hold in Africa for earning several billions of pounds by selling nuclear technology to developing African countries.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: The highest-ranking GRU defector Stanislav Lunev described alleged Soviet plans for using tactical nuclear weapons for sabotage against the United States in the event of war. He described Soviet-made suitcase nukes identified as RA-115s (or RA-115-01s for submersible weapons) which weigh . These portable bombs can last for many years if wired to an electric source. "In case there is a loss of power, there is a battery backup. If the battery runs low, the weapon has a transmitter that sends a coded message – either by satellite or directly to a GRU post at a Russian embassy or consulate."


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Lunev was personally looking for hiding places for weapons caches in the Shenandoah Valley area. He said that "it is surprisingly easy to smuggle nuclear weapons into the US" either across the Mexican border or using a small transport missile that can slip though undetected when launched from a Russian airplane. Searches of the areas identified by Lunev – who admits he never planted any weapons in the US – have been conducted, "but law-enforcement officials have never found such weapons caches, with or without portable nuclear weapons" in the US.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: In a 2004 interview, colonel general of RVSN Viktor Yesin said that Soviet small-scale nuclear bombs have only been operated by the Army. All such devices have been stored in a weapons depot within Russia, and only left it for checks at the plant which produced them.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: On June 2, 2020, President Putin signed an Executive Order formally titled "Fundamentals of Russia’s Nuclear Deterrence State Policy", in an unprecedented public release of an official document on Russia's nuclear policy. The six-page document identified the range of threats that Russia seeks to deter with its nuclear forces, clarified Russia’s general approach to nuclear deterrence, and articulated conditions under which Russia might use of nuclear weapons. The policy endorses the use of nuclear weapons in response to a non-nuclear strike due to the improved capabilities of U.S. conventional weapons.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin placed Strategic Rocket Forces's nuclear deterrence units on high alert, a move heavily condemned internationally. Putin warned that "whoever tries to hinder us in Ukraine would see consequences, you have never seen in your history". According to the US Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, Putin could potentially turn to nuclear weapons if he perceived an "existential threat" to the Russian state or regime. He could regard a possible defeat in Ukraine as an existential threat to his regime.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal "Nature Food" in August 2022, a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia, which together hold more than 90% of the world's nuclear weapons, would kill 360 million people directly and more than 5 billion indirectly by starvation during a nuclear winter.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: In September 2022, Putin announced the 2022 Russian mobilization and threatened nuclear retaliation against the west if Russia's territorial integrity was threatened.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: The Soviet Union covertly operated the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated biological weapons program. The program began in the 1920s and lasted until at least September 1992 but has possibly been continued by Russia after that. Thereby, the Soviet Union violated its obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention, which it had signed on April 10, 1972, and ratified on March 26, 1975.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union significantly enlarged its offensive biological weapons programs. After 1975, the program of biological weapons was run primarily by the "civilian" Biopreparat agency, although it also included numerous facilities run by the Soviet Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Chemical Industry, Ministry of Health, and Soviet Academy of Sciences.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: According to Ken Alibek, who was deputy-director of Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons agency, and who defected to the United States in 1992, weapons were developed in labs in isolated areas of the Soviet Union including mobilization facilities at Omutininsk, Penza and Pokrov and research facilities at Moscow, Stirzhi and Vladimir. These weapons were tested at several facilities most often at "Rebirth Island" (Vozrozhdeniya) in the Aral Sea by firing the weapons into the air above monkeys tied to posts, the monkeys would then be monitored to determine the effects. According to Alibek, although Soviet offensive program was officially ended in 1992, Russia may be still involved in the activities prohibited by BWC.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: In 1993, the story about the Sverdlovsk anthrax leak was published in Russia. The incident occurred when spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a military facility in the city of Sverdlovsk (formerly, and now again, Yekaterinburg) east of Moscow on April 2, 1979. The ensuing outbreak of the disease resulted in 94 people becoming infected, 64 of whom died over a period of six weeks.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: As of 2021, the United States Department of State "assesses that the Russian Federation (Russia) maintains an offensive [biological weapons] program and is in violation of its obligation under Articles I and II of the BWC. The issue of compliance by Russia with the BWC has been of concern for many years".


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention on January 13, 1993, and ratified it on November 5, 1997. Russia declared an arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons in 1997 consisting of:


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Ratification was followed by three years of inaction on chemical weapons destruction because of the August 1998 Russian financial crisis.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Russia met its treaty obligations by destroying 1% of its chemical agents by the Chemical Weapons Convention's 2002 deadline, but requested technical and financial assistance and extensions on the deadlines of 2004 and 2007 due to the environmental challenges of chemical disposal. This extension procedure spelled out in the treaty has been utilized by other countries, including the United States. The extended deadline for complete destruction (April 2012) was not met. As of October 2011, Russia had destroyed 57% of its stockpile. Russia also destroyed all of its declared Category 2 (10,616 MTs) and Category 3 chemicals.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Russia has stored its chemical weapons (or the required chemicals) which it declared within the CWC at 8 locations: in Gorny (Saratov Oblast) (2.9% of the declared stockpile by mass) and Kambarka (Udmurt Republic) (15.9%) stockpiles already have been destroyed. In Shchuchye (Kurgan Oblast) (13.6%), Maradykovsky (Kirov Oblast) (17.4%) and Leonidovka (Penza Oblast) (17.2%) destruction takes place, while installations are under construction in Pochep (Bryansk Oblast) (18.8%) and Kizner (Udmurt Republic) (14.2%).


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: On September 27, 2017, OPCW announced that Russia had destroyed its entire declared chemical weapons stockpile. Ukraine claims Russia used chemical weapons in Mariupol.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: A range of Novichok agents were developed and tested in the 1970s and 1980s, but the intended Novichok weapons production site at the Pavlodar Chemical Plant in Soviet Kazakhstan was still under construction when it was decided to demolish the chemical weapons building in 1987 in view of the forthcoming Chemical Weapons Convention.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: In March 2018, former GRU agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned in Salisbury, United Kingdom by a chemical agent later confirmed to be Novichok. The incident raised new controversy over Russia's potential production and use of chemical weapons, with the United Kingdom accusing the Russian government or rogue Russian agents of orchestrating the attack, a claim Russia repeatedly denied.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: In August 2020, Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned in Tomsk, Russia by a chemical agent later confirmed to be Novichok. A joint investigation by Bellingcat, CNN, Der Spiegel, and The Insider with contributions from El País implicates Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) in the near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning, a fact denied by Russia. Navalny later called what appears to be one of the FSB agents responsible for the cleanup operation who indicates they were tasked to clean Navalny's underpants of Novichok.


title: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

text: Russia has a number of factories for destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal: Gorny in Saratov Oblast, Kambarka in Udmurtia, Leonidovka Penza Oblast, Maradykovsky in Kirov Oblast, Shchuchye in Kurgan Oblast and the latest one Pochep in the Bryansk Oblast 70 km from the border with Ukraine, built with funds from Italy in accordance with the agreement signed between the two countries. The last Russian chemical disposal facility in Kizner, Udmurtia, was opened in December 2013.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Jacques Joseph Charles Villeneuve ( born 9 April 1971) is a Canadian professional racing driver and amateur musician who won the 1997 Formula One World Championship with Williams. In addition to Formula One (F1) he has competed in various other forms of motor racing, winning the 1995 Indianapolis 500 and the 1995 PPG Indy Car World Series. He is the son of former Ferrari racing driver Gilles Villeneuve.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Villeneuve began kart racing at age 14 before progressing to open-wheel car racing in the Italian Formula Three Championship, which he raced in between 1989 and 1991. He moved to the higher-tier Toyota Atlantic Championship, participating in one race during the 1992 season and finishing third overall in the 1993 championship. He began competing in Championship Auto Racing Teams with the Forsythe/Green Racing team in the 1994 season, finishing sixth in the Drivers' Championship with one victory and earning Rookie of the Year and Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year honours. In the following year with the renamed Team Green, Villeneuve won four races (including the Indianapolis 500) and the Drivers' Championship.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Villeneuve moved to Williams in F1 for the 1996 season, claiming four Grand Prix victories, and becoming the first rookie runner-up in the World Drivers' Championship (WDC) after a season-long duel with teammate Damon Hill. His main title challenge for the following season came from Ferrari's Michael Schumacher, and Villeneuve beat the latter following a controversial collision at the season-ending , becoming the first Canadian World Drivers' Champion, achieving seven Grand Prix victories. He finished fifth in the 1998 season achieving two podiums and helped Williams finish third in the World Constructors' Championship behind Ferrari and McLaren. After an unsuccessful with British American Racing (BAR), Villeneuve finished seventh in the WDC in both and with BAR, achieving two podiums in 2001, outscoring his teammates Ricardo Zonta and Olivier Panis. Then Villeneuve raced in F1 from to , driving for BAR, Renault, Sauber and BMW Sauber, but he did not achieve any further success.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Villeneuve left Formula One mid-way through the 2006 season and began competing in various forms of motor racing such as sports car racing, NASCAR, and touring car racing. Though not as successful in these forms of racing, he won the 2008 1000 km of Spa driving for Peugeot. Villeneuve was appointed Officer of the National Order of Quebec in 1998. He was voted the winner of both the Lou Marsh Trophy and the Lionel Conacher Award in each of 1995 and 1997. Villeneuve is an inductee of the Canadian Motor Sports Hall of Fame, Canada's Sports Hall of Fame and the FIA Hall of Fame.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: On 9 April 1971, Villeneuve was born in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, a small town outside of Montreal in the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec. He is the son of snowmobile and future Ferrari racer Gilles Villeneuve and his wife Joann Barthe. Villeneuve has a sister, Melanie, and a half sister Jessica. His uncle, Jacques Sr., whom he was named after also competed in motor racing. Villeneuve spent most of his formative years travelling with the racing fraternity with his parents.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Aged seven in 1978, he and his family relocated from Berthierville, Quebec, to the small principality of Monaco on the French Riviera in France's south-east coast close to the border with Italy to be nearer to Ferrari's headquarters. On the advice of driver Patrick Tambay, Villeneuve was sent to the French-speaking Swiss private boarding Collège Alpin International Beau Soleil by his mother, which he attended from the ages of 12 (1983) to 17 (1988). He excelled in BASE jumping, ice hockey, motocross and water skiing. Villeneuve left the school by mutual consent between his mother and the school owners.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Villeneuve's mother was aware from when he was five that he wanted to race, and he went go-karting with his uncle several times in Canada. In May 1982, his father died in an accident with Jochen Mass during qualifying for the at Circuit Zolder. Jacques became less interested in motor racing after that, fearing the sport's dangers. In 1984, he asked his mother if he could do motor racing like his father. Villeneuve's mother agreed to let him race on the condition he improved his academic performance in one of his weakest subjects, mathematics. Though his mother preferred him to do a course in aerodynamic or mechanical engineering, she did not discourage her son from pursuing racing. In early September 1985, Villeneuve was invited by a SAGIS employee to race in 100 cc go-kart at Italy's Imola Circuit. He impressed the track owners so much that they let him test a 135 cc kart and then a Formula Four car. In July 1986, his uncle enrolled him in the Jim Russell Racing Driver School in Mont Tremblant, where he passed a three-day course driving a Formula Ford 1600 car from Van Diemen.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: In mid-1987, he left his family to attend the Spenard-David Racing School in Shannonville, Ontario to hone his abilities under Richard Spenard. Villeneuve did not have the money to pay for the course and his mother would not fund it because she thought Jacques finishing his education was more important. He, therefore, worked in a mechanics' training programme allowing students to learn racing in return for garage painting. Aged 17, Villeneuve was invited to make his car racing debut in the Italian Touring Car Championship, driving a Salerno Course-entered Group N Alfa Romeo 33 car for three rounds of the 1988 season. The Canadian and Italian authorities would not grant him a licence since he was a year younger than their minimum age requirement, so he obtained an international racing licence in Andorra with Canadian Automobile Sport Clubs aid. Villeneuve performed poorly in each of the three rounds.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: He went on to sign a three-year contract to drive a Reynard-Alfa Romeo car for Prema in the Italian Formula Three Championship, a deal that was aided by the squad obtaining sponsorship from the Camel cigarette company. Initially struggling to drive a Formula 3 car, he enrolled at the Magione Driving School. Under Henry Morrogh's direction, he gradually developed his character and driving technique. Villeneuve did not qualify five times, failed to finish three of the eleven races, and scored no points. In the 1990 season, he qualified for each of the 12 rounds and scored ten points for 14th in the Drivers' Championship. Villeneuve was considered a title favourite for the 1991 championship. A late-season switch to the Ralt RT35 chassis failed to improve his performance, but he still finished sixth overall with 20 points and 3 podiums. In late 1991, Villeneuve finished eighth in both the Macau Grand Prix and the Formula 3 Fuji Cup.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Dissatisfied with his management in 1991, he asked former Beausoleil sports administrator and motor racing promoter Craig Pollock to take over his management three times. For the 1992 season, he wanted to compete in Formula 3000 in Europe with Prema, but did not have the funding to compete with the top teams. Villeneuve accepted an offer to relocate to Japan and drive a Toyota 032F car for the TOM'S squad in the Japanese Formula 3 Championship in 1992 following advice from Tambay. He felt the Japanese series was almost as good as the Italian one, and he did not want to remain in Europe. Villeneuve was the only driver to receive works support from TOM'S, and he got driver training. He won three races and finished no lower than sixth nine times, earning second in the Drivers' Championship and 45 points. People in the racing world observed that ten years after his father's death, Villeneuve was becoming a well-known racer. In August, Pollock negotiated an contract for Villeneuve to enter the Formula Atlantic street event at Trois-Rivières in the 1992 Atlantic Championship. He finished third in the No. 49 Swift DB-4-Toyota car lent by the ComPred team. In addition, he also tested a C Class Toyota that year and was mentored by driver Roland Ratzenberger.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Four months later, Villeneuve accepted an invite to share a C Class TOM'S-entered Toyota TS010 car with Eddie Irvine and Tom Kristensen at the final round of the 1992 All Japan Sports Prototype Car Endurance Championship at Mine Circuit, finishing fourth. He was fourth at the Macau Grand Prix for TOM'S. In Trois-Rivières, Villeneuve met crew chief Barry Green who wanted a driver for his new Forsythe-Green Racing squad. He accepted a three-year contract from Green with personal sponsorship from sports marketing arm Player's November 1992. He raced the lower-tier 1993 Atlantic Championship which featured more powerful cars with more grip and downforce to become better acquainted with American open-wheel racing before progressing to Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) in 1994. Villeneuve built a close working relationship with aerodynamicist Tony Cicale. Driving the No. 10 Ralt RT40-Toyota car, Villeneuve won five races and finished in the top three four times for third overall and 185 points after a season-long duel with David Empringham and teammate Claude Bourbonnais. He was named the series' Rookie of the Year, and ended 1993 retiring from the Macau Grand Prix driving a March Racing Ralt 93C-Fiat car.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Villeneuve began participating in CART in the 1994 season for Forsythe-Green Racing, driving the No. 12 Reynard 94I-Ford XB vehicle after Green obtained sponsorship. He debuted at the season-opening Australian FAI Indycar Grand Prix at Surfers Paradise Street Circuit, starting eighth and finishing 17th after colliding with Stefan Johansson. In the season's next round, the Valvoline 200 at Phoenix International Raceway, he was involved in a five-car accident which saw him sustain a side collision with Hiro Matsushita before being struck by Dominic Dobson. Qualifying fourth for his first Indianapolis 500, Villeneuve finished second, earning Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year honors as the highest-finishing rookie. Villeneuve finished ninth or higher in six of the next nine rounds, before beating Al Unser Jr. and Emerson Fittipaldi in the close finish to the Texaco/Havoline 200 at Road America road course in his first CART victory. He placed seventh and third in the final two rounds ending the year with Rookie of the Year honors and was sixth in the Drivers' Championship with 94 points.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Before the 1995 season, he rejected offers from fellow CART teams and some Formula One (F1) squads and remained at the renamed Team Green driving the renumbered No. 27 Reynard 95I-Ford XB. Before the season, Villeneuve and his team were concerned, as their car had been unreliable and under-performed in pre-season testing. He won the season-opening Grand Prix of Miami after starting eighth, but he only finished two of the next four races. His season highlight was the Indianapolis 500. Though Villeneuve was penalised two laps for overtaking the pace car, he re-took the lead after fellow Canadian Scott Goodyear failed to serve a ten-second stop-and-go penalty for also passing the pace car. Winning just his second Indianapolis 500 start, Villeneuve took the Drivers' Championship lead. Villeneuve went on to win both the Texaco/Havoline 200 at Road America and the Grand Prix of Cleveland, also scoring points in all but one of the remaining rounds to clinch the title at the final race in Laguna Seca. He won the championship with 172 points, four victories and six pole positions.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: In early 1995, the Williams F1 team and engine supplier Renault became interested in Villeneuve replacing the outgoing David Coulthard. Bernie Ecclestone, F1's commercial rights holder, saw this as an opportunity to lure Villeneuve from CART although Team Green wanted him to remain in America. Technical director Patrick Head and team principal Frank Williams gave Villeneuve a test in a FW17 car at Britain's Silverstone Circuit in August 1995. He lapped two seconds slower than driver Damon Hill. Negotiations between Villeneuve's representatives in mid-1995 led to Villeneuve signing a contract for 1996 and 1997 with the option for the 1998 season. He was sent by Frank Williams to cover in testing during the six-month pre-season period testing on permanent European racing circuits, and he also prepared by learning the circuits on a simulation computer game.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: He drove the docile FW18 car equipped with a powerful, reliable Renault engine and a better gearbox. Villeneuve built up a rapport with his race engineer Jock Clear and learnt from his teammate Hill. Although not considered a title favourite by the media, he contended for the World Drivers' Championship with Hill but never led the standings. Villeneuve's debut at the season-opening saw him become the third driver ever to claim pole position on his first start, and despite an oil leak, he finished second. He beat Ferrari's Michael Schumacher in the three races later for his maiden F1 victory. Villeneuve scored points in eight of the next eleven events and won the , the and the . Entering the season-ending , he had nine fewer points than Hill, requiring him to win the event and for Hill to score no points to claim the title. However, Villeneuve's right-rear tyre came off his car, forcing him to retire from the race. He finish runner-up to Hill in the drivers' standings with 78 points in his maiden season. Villeneuve was the first rookie to achieve four Grand Prix victories in his debut year and the first to finish runner-up overall.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Before the 1997 season, Hill moved to the Arrows team, resulting in Villeneuve's promotion to lead driver. He was paired with Heinz-Harald Frentzen. He and Schumacher vied for that year's World Drivers' Championship and variously shared the title lead. Villeneuve trained extensively and drove an aerodynamically efficient and powerful FW19 car designed around him. He won seven and qualified on pole position eight times in the first 14 races. At the season's penultimate race, the , he had a chance to win the championship but was banned for overtaking under yellow flag conditions twice during practice. He was allowed to race under appeal but was disqualified from fifth when the appeal was rejected. Before the season-ending , Villeneuve had 77 points, one fewer than Schumacher, requiring him to finish in the top six and ahead of Schumacher to win the championship. During qualifying, Villeneuve, Schumacher and Frentzen all set the exact same lap time, but Villeneuve started from pole position per F1 regulations because he was the first driver to set the time. Villeneuve and Schumacher were involved in a collision that saw Schumacher careen into a gravel trap, giving the title to Villeneuve. He was the second driver (after Mario Andretti) to win the F1 World Championship, the CART title and the Indianapolis 500. He was also Canada's first F1 World Champion.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Villeneuve threatened to leave F1 and return to CART if F1 introduced grooved tyres and narrower cars for the 1998 season. Though these changes were adopted, he remained at Williams with Frentzen. Villeneuve's FW20 car had one-year old Mecachrome-branded engines after Renault's withdrawal from F1 after the 1997 season, which transported to be noncompetitive. He scored points at nine with a season-high third at each of the and at the following . During practice for the , he lost control of his car in Eau Rouge corner and crashed backwards into the barrier at approximately . Villeneuve was unhurt. With 21 points, he finished fifth in the Drivers' Championship.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: He left Williams following the 1998 season. McLaren technical director Adrian Newey, who liked Villeneuve's performance and who Villeneuve respected, offered him employment for the 1999 season, but Villeneuve rejected it. He instead signed a contract to drive with the new British American Racing (BAR) team founded by Pollock and British American Tobacco following their late 1997 purchase of the financially struggling Tyrrell team. Villeneuve joined the team because he sought to emulate Schumacher's style of basing a team around him and employing highly skilled people to get from the bottom of the running order to the top.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Villeneuve was joined at BAR by former McLaren test driver Ricardo Zonta for most of the season and then by Mika Salo for three . His BAR 01 car was efficient and fast but chronically unreliable. He failed to finish each of the first eleven races due to either mechanical trouble or crashing. Villeneuve was only able to finish four Grands Prix with a best finish of eighth at the . Villeneuve qualified a season-high fifth at the and was briefly third in the two events later before retiring. During qualifying for the , he suffered a high-speed crash through Eau Rouge corner, which destroyed his car but left him uninjured. He tallied no points towards the Drivers' Championship.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: For the 2000 season, his BAR 002 car had a more reliable and powerful works Honda engine, and Zonta was again his teammate. Villeneuve finished fourth at the season-opening and scored two more points by placing fifth at the two races later. He also finished fourth at the , the and the . Villeneuve scored points in the final two races by finishing sixth at the and fifth at the . Overall, his performances had improved from 1999 due to a better built and more reliable car. Villeneuve finished the season seventh in the Drivers' Championship with 17 points.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: There were rumours of Villeneuve leaving the BAR team after 2000. He talked to Benetton, Ferrari and McLaren about racing with them in the 2001 championship. Villeneuve later admitted McLaren was not an option since his management team got accused of conducting early season publicity and he disliked McLaren's corporate methodology. Villeneuve also considered taking a sabbatical, but he ultimately signed a three-year contract extension with BAR in July 2000. He obtained a get-out clause enabling him to leave BAR should they under-perform.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: He was joined by Olivier Panis, and the 003 car he drove was approximately lighter than the 002 chassis. Villeneuve was cordial with his teammate since they could talk to each other in French, and set himself the goal of winning a race and finishing third in the Drivers' Championship. His car was fairly reliable but lacked rear grip and straight-line speed due to an underpowered Honda engine. At the season-opening , Villeneuve struck the rear of Ralf Schumacher's car, launching him into the air. One of Villeneuve's car's wheels struck marshal Graham Beveridge, killing him. Villeneuve achieved BAR's first two podium results, finishing third at both the and the . He finished the season seventh in the Drivers' Championship with 12 points. Although he scored five fewer points than the year before, Villeneuve qualified higher than Panis eleven times in 2001.


title: Jacques Villeneuve

text: Before the 2002 season Villeneuve remained at BAR. He talked to team principal Flavio Briatore, who offered him a seat at Renault in lieu of Jenson Button but Villeneuve rejected it. Villeneuve ultimately opted to remain at BAR due to pressure from Honda, and he again partnered with Panis. He became uncomfortable when new BAR team principal David Richards publicly mentioned that many spent on Villeneuve's high salary could be better used for research and development. The BAR 004 chassis proved to be more unreliable than the year before and slower due to an under-powered Honda engine. He scored four points for 12th in the Drivers' Championship with a fourth place at the being his season's best result. Villeneuve regretted remaining at BAR due to the lack of results, and he was offered a contract to join Team Player's in CART for the 2003 championship before returning to BAR for the 2004 and 2005 F1 seasons. The deal was pushed by Richards but not agreed upon because Villeneuve's and Pollock's financial settlements were too great for team owner Gerald Forsythe to be willing to take on.