Joe Burke
In his outgoing York Factory Express journal of 1847, Thomas Lowe lists the passengers who are travelling up the Columbia River with him. A mysterious “Joe Burke” was among…
Read moreBuilding Fort McLoughlin
And so the Hudson’s Bay Company men have arrived in McLoughlin Bay, in what the HBC men on the coast called Milbanke Sound, on the North West Coast. They have…
Read moreThomas Lowe sails north
The ship Vancouver, in which Thomas Lowe is sailing, has now reached the Pacific Ocean and is heading north toward Fort Vancouver, where he expects to begin his employment in…
Read moreAthabasca Pass
The subject of this post is the Athabasca Pass, and the Hudson’s Bay Company men who used this route to reach the Columbia District from the Saskatchewan. In 1826, Aemilius…
Read morePaul Kane’s “Big Hill”
So in 1846, Paul Kane and the few remaining men of the incoming York Factory Express spent their night trying to keep warm at their encampment on the shores of…
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