Augustus Peers’s journal
Augustus Peers was the older brother of Henry Newsham Peers, of Forts Langley and Victoria. Henry was a man who made history west of the Rocky Mountains: he will be…
Read more“Never Start a Journey on a Friday”
I have always known that a Hudson’s Bay Company voyageur would refuse to start a journey on a Friday. This was a tradition that was probably also true for the…
Read moreAlexis L’Esperance
Alexis L’Esperance appears regularly in the journals of the York Factory Express, but he never is traveling in their boats. His full name is Alexis Bonamie dit L’Esperance — and…
Read moreGrand Rapids
In 1842, Alexander Caulfield Anderson led the York Factory Express to Hudson Bay. As always, the express men descended the Saskatchewan River to Lake Winnipeg, and two or three months…
Read moreThe Orkney Islands
“It is the lot and duty of every man to seek a profession,” Augustus Richard Peers wrote from Peel’s River House [later Fort McPherson] in the early 1850’s. “Some there…
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