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Ole Andreasen came to the North on a whaling ship that was possibly captained by his brother. He was a trader who operated the trading post at Shingle Point in the Richardson Islands in the early 1930s for T.C. Pederson. He also had a post at Point Atkinson (Nuvoraq) in the early 1920s. He traveled with Vilhjalmur Steffanson on several of Steffanson's expeditions in the Canadian Arctic and owned the ship the 'Gladiator'. He married Susanna, also known as Atugpik and had two sons, David and Jasper.

In the 1920s, A.N. Blake opened an independent trading post in Fort McPherson. Blake kept a Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) ledger of 'Indian Accounts' for Indigenous traders who dealt with him. Blake may have had special trading arrangements with the Hudson's Bay Company, where traders brought furs to him and received chits to exchange at the HBC post for specified goods. Blake's post closed in 1935.

James Cree was born in Dundee Scotland in 1904. In 1925, he immigrated to Canada and began working for the trading company Revillon Freres, Ltd. He left the employ of Revillon Freres in 1929 to work for the T. Eaton Company in Edmonton. In 1932, he was hired by Northern Traders, Ltd. to run a trading post in Fort Smith. While working in Fort Smith, he married Gladys, who had moved to Edmonton in 1918 and had worked for Revillon Freres. Between the years 1932 and 1938, Gladys and James Cree operated trading posts for the Northern Traders, Ltd. in Fort Smith, Fort Rae, Fort Norman and Fort Simpson. In 1938, they ended their association with Northern Traders and established an independent trading post in Fort Simpson. They ran this post until 1963 when they retired to Victoria, British Columbia. During these years as independent traders, they also acted as local agents for Imperial Oil and Canadian Pacific Airlines.

Poole Field was a trader, trapper and prospector in the Yukon and Nahanni Butte region. He was born near Regina in approximately 1880. He joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (RNWMP) as a young man and transferred to the Yukon during the gold rush in the late 1890s. After three years, Field left the RNWMP and went to Alaska for about five years. He returned to the Yukon and during this time, he met and married Mary Atkinson (nee Lafferty). Field made at least one trip into the Nahanni region in 1905 but returned to the Yukon. Mary and Poole moved to the Nahanni Butte region in approximately 1914 after coming into the possession of a letter written by Martin Jorgenson claiming he had found gold. In 1915 or 1916, Field and his companions found the remains of Jorgenson at his burned cabin near Virginia Falls. According to Dick Turner, author of the book "Nahanni", Field spoke Cree and Slavey fluently and was an excellent woodsman. In approximately 1924, Field began operating as an independent trader and ran a store at Trout Lake for three years before returning to Nahanni Butte where he operated an independent trading post from 1928 to about 1935. In the 1940s, Field worked as a river pilot during the summer and trapped during the winter seasons.

The photographs were taken by Richard E. Howell, a British subject who left England to accept a position with the Hudson’s Bay Company. His employment sent him to Tulita (Fort Norman). From there he spent time in a few other NWT communities.

Knut H. Lang was born on July 21, 1895 in Silkeborg, Jutland, Denmark. He worked his way to Canada via land-clearing in England and as a farm labourer in New Zealand. In 1928, he came to the north by cutting timber for a ship's fuel as it travelled down the Mackenzie River. He eventually settled in Aklavik where he operated a small trading post and also worked as an independent trapper. He was elected to the Northwest Territories Council in August 1957 to represent the Mackenzie Delta and remained a member until the last session which closed in November 1963. He died on April 13, 1964 after a long illness.

Charles Victor Rowan was born in Guben, Germany in 1892 and arrived in Canada in 1911. During World War I, Charles was interned as an enemy alien at camps in Manitoba (1914) and Vernon, British Columbia (1917). He was granted a Certificate of Release in 1919. He entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company on May 15, 1926 where he traveled aboard the "Bay Maud" enroute to the Western Arctic and his first posting at Perry River, where he was Post Manager from 1926-1929. In 1929, he was transferred to Fort Collinson where he operated the Hudson's Bay Company post from June until October 1929, until resigning from the Hudson's Bay Company in October. He rejoined the Hudson's Bay Company in July 1930 and went to King William Land until 1932. He was then transferred to Fort Collinson until 1936. Between 1937-1938, Rowan was post manager at Fort Collinson, Tuktoyaktuk and finally ended his career with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1939 while post manager at Baille Island. He resigned from service on August 14, 1939 and became the owner and operator of the Boston Bar Hotel in British Columbia. He died in Vancouver, British Columbia 1978.

Paul Williamson was a Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) employee who transferred from Portage La Loche, Saskatchewan to Yellowknife. He remained in Yellowknife from 1939 until 1940.