In your case, you could concentrate on the University of Manitoba (because Winnipeg was one of the fur trade centers) as well as the University of Toronto. You might also want to check into the archives of the Hudson Bay Company and the North West Company. Both are still in business and they were the first of the fur trade companies. Their archives

would likely have copies of pertinent theses and might save you a little work.

You don’t have to actually read the theses, simply cite them.

Please don’t say you have to turn this in tomorrow!

I had to write a thesis, but not do a ‘thesis search.’

Just look at it like you were making a Bibliography. Read the 20 different documents, and list one thesis for every page you read-citing its location and source. That will give you a list of 20 theses. (The thesis statement is usually at the beginning 1st or 2nd paragraph OR sometimes it is in the Executive Summary in the beginning.)

All you need to do is find and list 20 of them by doing an online search for the two main fur trade companies she mentioned. (I hope this helps!)

Keyword Idea: Early Fur Trade Thesis, Fur Trade Companies

If your assignment is a “paper”, then condensing down what you’ve read into a few paragraphs should be sufficient. You should follow a general plan of telling the reader what you’re planning to explore, write a couple of good paragraphs about what you’ve discovered, then give a re-cap of what you’ve written. The 20 pages you read should be from more than one publication. You’ll need to know, also, if you have to give your sources of information.