In 1816, Lord Selkirk sent out a band of Norwegians, apparently ex-convicts, to build a road from York Factory to Lake Winnipeg and a series of supply posts. They built Norway House at Mossy Point on the west side of the Nelson's outflow from Lake Winnipeg in 1817, replacing the former Jack River post at that location. In the last days of the rivalry between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company, prior to their union in 1821, Colin Robertson, of the Hudson's Bay Company from their office in Montreal, organized a brigade of mostly French-Canadians led by John Clarke, bound for the Athabasca country to compete with the North West Company by developing the trade of supplying the colonists in addition to the company's usual business of trading furs.