Portage La Loche Brigade

Grand Rapids

Saskatchewan River

Cumberland House

Churchill River

Frog Portage

Methye Portage

Île-à-la-Crosse

Sturgeon-Weir River

Fort Chipewyan

Clearwater River

Athabasca River

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The La Loche Brigade route from Lake Winnipeg to Methye Portage

The Portage La Loche Brigade was a York boat fur brigade that travelled between Fort Garry, the Methye Portage and York Factory in Rupert's Land. This famous brigade travelled 4000 miles every year and was part of the Hudson's Bay Company transportation system during the North American fur trade.^[1] Their trip from Fort Garry to Portage La Loche (known also as Methye Portage) would begin around 1 June and end around 8 October. Only one other brigade had a longer route. The York Factory Express brigade travelled 4200 miles from York Factory to Fort Vancouver until 1846.

By the 1820s the Hudson's Bay company had several York boat brigades travelling distinct routes. Permanent trading posts had been built at strategic sites along the main brigade routes and as soon as the waterways were free of ice the fur brigades would carry trade goods and food supplies to replenish the various trading posts along their route and pick up the accumulation of furs caught during the winter season. They also carried mail and passengers.

The boat brigades were mostly crewed by Métis as were almost all the men employed by the Hudson's Bay Company's Northern Department (now the Prairie Provinces and the North-West Territories).^[2] In 1862 Father Émile Petitot quoted William J. Christie then the chief factor of Fort Edmonton as saying in French; "We are almost all Métis in the Company. Among the chief factors there is not a single Englishman, and maybe not ten Scots with pure blood." (translation)^[2]