The Hudson's Bay Company, a fur-trading enterprise headquartered in London, began operations on the shores of Hudson Bay in 1670. During the next century and a half, it gradually expanded its network of trading posts west across Canada. In addition to their trade in fur, mainly beaver, the Hudson's Bay Company also traded swans, and sometimes geese, for their skins and quills in the 18th and 19th centuries. The skins were then sent to Europe in huge numbers. Annually, between three and five thousand swans were killed, which greatly contributed to the decline of trumpeter and tundra swans to the point where they were very scarce in the interior of North  America. The skins were marketed for European garments and the quills  were marketed for quill pens. Pens made out of swan quills were first sold by bundles of 25 or 100 to  the London market in 1736. In 1837, 1,259,000 quills from both swans  and geese were sold in London. Ten quills were taken from each swan or  goose, resulting in the sacrifice of over 100,000 swans and geese in  that year alone from Rupert's Land, a trading post.  Powder puffs for women, coat-linings, vests, ceremonial robes,  ornaments, boas, wallets, caps, jackets, quilts, pillows and mattresses  are among the many items crafted with swan skins and quills. Episode 7 is about the Hudson's Bay Company that would occupy the lands that would one day be parts  of five different provinces, it would explore the west, bring settlers  and change the fabric of the continent.