Norman Wolfred Kittson (5 March 1814 – 10 May 1888) was variously a fur trader, steamboat-line operator, and railway entrepreneur.

Although born in Chambly, Quebec (then Lower Canada), Kittson had by 1830 apprenticed with the American Fur Company, and relocated first to Minnesota and then to the Dakota Territory of the United States. He established Pembina, North Dakota as a base of his increasingly independent fur-trading operations. Pembina was only approximately 100 km south of the Hudson's Bay Company-controlled Red River Settlement in Rupert's Land, and Kittson's operation was by the 1840s threatening the trade monopoly exerted by the HBC. He established strong connections to the local Métis population, and obtained many of his furs by trade with them. Kittson was instrumental in the end of the HBC monopoly in 1849, as it was with Kittson that trapper Guillaume Sayer was trading prior to his trial that effectively broke the monopoly.

In 1854, Kittson relocated from Pembina to St. Paul, where he established himself as a locally prominent businessman. From 1858&nbsp– 1859 he served as mayor. During this period, his business interests extended into the Red River Settlement, including a store in St. Boniface, now modern Winnipeg, Manitoba. Beginning in 1858, Kittson began organizing steamship service and Red River cart service between St. Paul and the Red River Settlement.

By 1872, Kittson joined with former competitor James Jerome Hill to establish the Red River Transportation Company , which owned five steam-boats and exerted an effective monopoly on traffic on the Red River. In 1879, Kittson became a railway entrepreneur when he joined forces with Hill, HBC representative Donald Alexander Smith and banker George Stephen to purchase the financially troubled St. Paul and Pacific Railroad , which they reorganized into the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway . This railway established the first rail link between St. Boniface and St. Paul, and was financially successful — the sale of his shares in 1881 made Kittson a very wealthy man. These same three men later formed the nucleus of a syndicate established in 1880 that led to the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Kittson died 10 May 1888 in a sleeping car berth while travelling on the Chicago and Northwestern Railway towards St. Paul.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online