Sir George to Red River
Image of a birchbark canoe on a Canadian River, from Glenbow Archive, image na-843-14, used with their permission
In 1841, Sir George travelled into the Red River Colony from Lachine, making his way by the traditional canoe route up the Ottawa, the Mattawa, and the French, to the Great Lakes. From Lake Huron he passed into Lake Superior and made his way to Fort William, where the thriving city of Thunder Bay now stands. They exchanged their Montreal canoes for the smaller, faster canoes (canots du Nord) generally used North of Fort William, and continued their journey into Rupert’s Land.
As the navigation for the first fifty miles was greatly obstructed by rapids and shallows, we were to be accompanied to that distance by a fourth canoe, as a tender; and at six o’clock, after a stay of four hours, our little squadron, in full song, darted merrily up the beautiful river whose verdant banks formed a striking and agreeable contrast with the sterile and rugged coast of Lake Superior. About eight we encamped at Pointe de Meuron, the site of an establishment that was once maintained here by the Hudson’s Bay Company as a check on Fort William, the grand rendezvous of the Northwesters.
This was a small outpost called Pointe de Meuron House, built at Pointe de Meuron, on the Kaministquia River, about 9 or 10 miles upstream from Fort William. It was established in 1817 on the North bank of the river, and operated until the Coalition in 1821. Sir George would have travelled through Pointe de Meuron House in 1820, after he dropped off a message at Fort William. It was used both as a trading post and as a strategic post to monitor and counter the NWC’s operations during the height of the fur trade wars. So, let us continue the journey west in 1841. “In the morning there was a sharp frost for some hours after starting, our extremities being nipped by the cold, and the paddles being coated with ice.” You will remember, of course, that Simpson begins his journey every morning at 2 a.m. Naturally, it was cold!
Sir George’s journal continues: “Early in the forenoon we reached the Mountain Portage formed by the Kakabekka Falls.” Mountain Portage is a good name for these falls: Kakabeka Falls is on the Kaministiquia River 10 miles West of the city of Thunder Bay, where Fort William once stood. They have a drop of 130 feet and cascade into a gorge carved out of the rocks of the Canadian Shield. From the photos, they are a spectacular set of falls! However, because of the gorge below the falls, the HBC men have to take a circuitous route to make this portage.
Out of sight of the main tracks–the scene being accessible only by a tangled path–the Kaministiquia here taking a sudden turn, leaps into a deep and dark ravine, itself a succession of leaps while the spectator stands right in front, near enough to be covered with the spray. Inferior in volume alone to Niagara, the Kakabekka has the advantage of its far famed rival in height of fall and wildness of scenery. About the middle of the descent, a beautiful rainbow, at the time of our visit, spanned the churning water, contrasting sweetly at once with the white foam, the green woods, and the sombre rocks.
The river, during the day’s march, passed through forests of elm, oak, pine, birch, &c being studded with isles not less fertile and lovely than its banks; and many a spot reminded us of the rich and quiet scenery of England. The paths of the numerous portages were spangled with violets, roses, and many other wild flowers, while the currant, the gooseberry, the raspberry, the cherry, and even the vine, were abundant. All this beauty of nature was imbued, as it were, with life, by the cheerful notes of a variety of birds, and by the restless flutter of butterflies of the brightest hues. Compared with the adamantine deserts of Lake Superior, the Kaministiquoia presented a perfect paradise.
Word is telling me that adamantine is not a word, but a dictionary says that it is, and that it means “utterly unyielding, rigidly firm, or extremely hard,” and it derives from the Greek word for “unconquerable.” How interesting! Adamantine is also the root word for “diamond!” (And I now see that I spelled it wrong, which is why Word was protesting.) Sir George’s journal continues:
In the course of the afternoon my canoe struck a rock in one of the rapids, tearing a hole in her bottom. Soon, however, the wreck was docked on dry land, and with the aid of stitching and gumming, was again as good as new in no time. The rock must have been a sharp one, for the covering of bark is so tough that a round stone has often been known to smash the ribs of the vessel without breaking the skin.
Next day, being Sunday, the thirtieth of the month, we crossed the Dog Portage, about two miles in length, early in the morning. The view from the summit is justly admired by all who see it. At the spectator’s feet is stretched a panorama of hill and dale, checkered with the various tints of the pine, the aspen, the ash and the oak, while through the middle there meanders the silvery stream of the Kaministaquoia, often doubling and turning as if willing to linger for ever on so lovely a spot…
On Monday, being the last day of May, we crossed the height of land between Canada and The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Territories, consisting of three considerable portages, the Prairie, the Mileau, and the Savanne. At the commencement of the first we left behind us one of the thousand sources of the St Lawrence in the shape of a shallow pool strewed with poles, which successive voyageurs, at the the head of their up-hill work, have thrown away as useless. The last, which is nearly two miles long, lies through a perfectly level swamp, which, as far back as “Auld Lang Syne,” has been paved with a triple row of round rails placed end to end. There this bridge happens to be entire, the traveler gets along wonderfully well with a groove for each shoe; where one rail has vanished, he is pretty sure to put his foot into it; and where only one stick remains, or no stick at all, he has no help but to let both his legs take their chance of reaching the bottom. Your novice generally takes a paddle for a crutch; and friends of mine have sometimes doubly armed themselves in this way.
At the farther end of the Savanne we descended the little river Embarras, so named from the great number of fallen trees lying across its narrow channel. We sometimes cut through these obstructions, sometimes crept under them, and sometimes pushed them back like swinging gates; but occasionally we found them so matted into dams that we had to make our portages round them.
On the first of June, soon after passing through the beautiful Lake of a Thousand Lakes [Lac de Mille Lacs], we descended a small and troublesome river, something like our yesterday’s Embarras, to the French Portage, generally acknowledged to be the very worst in this part of the country. The path lay over a succession of steep ascents and descents, while the bottom was generally a miry swamp, obstructed by underwood and fallen trees. The length of two and a half miles cost even the unencumbered passengers a struggle. [Remember, the voyageurs had to pack the goods over this trail.] Our troubles in wading through this combination of hill and valley, of morass and forest, were aggravated by clouds of sand flies which almost fatigued our arms in sweeping them from our faces and feet.
So I have often heard these travellers talk about sand flies–for example Augustus Richard Peers complained about their bites. I looked them up, and learned that their bites are ridiculously painful! Wikipedia describes the sand flies as any fly that bites that is found in sandy areas, and it seems to be the female who does the biting! And, as Wikipedia also says, “the bites normally result in a small, intensely itchy bump or welt, the strength of which intensifies over a period of 5-7 days before dissipating. Sandfly bites can be distinguished from mosquito bites as sandfly bites are usually found in clusters as they attack animals in groups.” These charming little flies can also carry a virus that is a cousin of rabies, and of other illnesses almost as serious. Sir George Simpson’s story continues:
In the morning we passed down a small river and through Sturgeon Lake into the Maligne, a stream abounding in sharp stones and short portages. Thence we proceeded through Lac la Croix to the Macan, which strikingly resembles the Maligne. At nearly all the rapids and falls on these two rivers, the Indians have erected platforms, which stretch about twenty feet from the shore; and on these they fix themselves, spear in hand, for hours, as silent and motionless as possible, till some doomed fish comes within the range of their unerring weapon. If they take more sturgeon than what they immediately require, they tether the supernumeraries by a string through the mouth and gill to the bank, and this mode of confinement, at least for a week or two, affects neither the weight nor the flavor of the prisoners.
And so, too, did the HBC men tether their sturgeon: or at least the men at Cumberland House did. Augustus Peers tells that story. Some of you might not know what sturgeon are. There are 27 species of fish belonging to the sturgeon family Acipenseridae, although a number of species are now extinct in the wild. They are found in both freshwater rivers and lakes as well as in tidal estuaries. They live a long time: there are many long-lived sturgeon in the Fraser River, for example. They are bottom-feeders that migrate upriver to spawn. They are a long and narrow fish–but a big tube rather then snake-like–and grow quite large–7 to 12 feet in length. These are the fish that have in the past been harvested for their roe, which makes caviar. They are an endangered fish and are now protected, but some people still pull them out of the Fraser to look at them. Anyway, Simpson’s story continues.
On the morrow, towards noon, we made a short portage from the Macan to a muddy stream falling into Lac la Pluie. As we were passing down this muddy and shallow creek fire suddenly burst forth in the woods near us. The fames, crackling and clambering up each tree quickly rose above the forest; within a few minutes more the dry grass on the very margin of the waters was in a running blaze and before we were well clear of the danger, we were almost enveloped in clouds of smoke and ashes. These conflagrations, often caused by a wanderer’s fire, or even by his pipe, desolate large tracts of country, leaving nothing but black and bare trunks, and even these sometimes mutilated into stumps…After traversing Lac la Pluie and five or six miles of the river of the same name, we reached our post between ten and eleven in the evening, being saluted by about a hundred Saulteaux, the warriors of a band of about five hundred souls; and these savages, after accompanying us to the fort with one of their wild songs, presented me with a letter written by one of their own nation, who had been educated in Canada, and was now acting as interpreter for the Wesleyan missionary of the establishment…
I have omitted the incidents that happened while they were at Lac la Pluie, and we continue with Sir George Simpson’s journey as he makes his way down the river that empties Lac la Pluie.
The river which empties Lac la Pluie into the Lake of the Woods is decidedly the finist steam on the whole route in more than one respect. From Fort Frances downwards, a stretch of nearly a hundred miles, it is not interrupted by a single impediment; while yet the current is not strong enough materially to retard an ascending traveler. Nor are the banks less favorable to agriculture than the waters themselves to navigation, resembling, in some measure, those of the Thames near Richmond. From the very brink of the river there rises a gentle slope of green award, crowned in many places with a plentiful growth of birch, poplar, beech, elm and oak Is it too much for the eye of philanthropy to discern, through the vista of futurity, this noble stream, connecting, as it does, the fertile shores of two spacious lakes, with crowded steamboats on its bosom and populous towns on its borders?
In spite of a contrary wind, we next day got within fifteen miles of the farther end of the Lake of the Woods. Though the shores of this sheet of water are more rocky than those of Lac la Pluie, yet they are very fertile, producing the rice already mentioned in abundance, and bringing maize to perfection. The lake is also literally studded with woody islands, from which it has doubtless derived its name; and these islands being exempted from nocturnal frosts which exist chiefly in the neighborhood of swamps are better adapted than the mainland for cultivation.
Before sunrise in the morning we reached our establishment of Rat Portage, situated at the head of the magnificent stream which empties the Lake of the Woods into Lake Winnipeg. This river, which takes the same name as the inland sea that receives it [Lake Winnipeg], forms, along its rocky channel, so many falls and rapids, that its length of three hundred miles is broken by no fewer than seven-and-thirty portages. After an amphibious course of two days and a half, we reached Fort Alexander, distant about a mile and a half from Lake Winnipeg, about noon on Tuesday, the eighth of the month [June]. Starting again after a half of a few hours our progress was much impeded by a southerly wind, which had also had the usual effect of driving off the waters from this end of the lake to such an extent, that we were obliged to make a portage in a channel, which I had usually passed under full paddle.
Next morning, we entered on the grand traverse, leading to the mouth of the Red River. The adjacent shores are so low that there is generally some difficulty in striking the entrance of the stream; but on this occasion we were assisted by a column of smoke which, as we were informed, would guide us to our destined haven. About seven in the evening, we arrived at the Lower Fort of Red River settlement, having previously passed a large village of Indians settled as agriculturists under the charge of the Rev. Mr. Smithurst of the Church Missionary Society. So far as mosquitoes, sand-flies, and bull-dogs were concerned, this was the worst encampment of the whole route.
Bull-dogs are, in this case, large and aggressive flies such as horse flies or moose flies. Sir George Simpson’s party was camped at Lower Fort Garry, which was built in 1822, on the site of the NWC Fort Gibraltar before the Coalition. When built it was a rough affair with wooden palisades, and was located near the banks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers. Much of its land was washed out in the floods of 1826, and the fort was rebuilt and for a while Simpson made this his home in Red River. In 1835, work was begun on the Upper Fort Garry, which was built some twenty-three miles up the Red River from this old fort. At this time, Upper Fort Garry is the place that Simpson made his home. His journal continues:
Next afternoon we reached Fort Garry twenty-three miles higher up the river, where we were kindly welcomed by my relatives, Mr. and Mrs. [Duncan] Finlayson. Thus we had accomplished in safety our long voyage of about two thousand miles. On the whole, we had been fortunate with regard to the weather. During our thirty-eight days, rain had fallen only on parts of six; and though immediately on leaving Montreal, we had encountered piercing winds and chilly nights, yet we soon had, in general as delightful a temperature as we could wish.
Duncan Finlayson was Sir George Simpson’s childhood friend, and they had attended the same school in Dingwall, on the Cromarty Firth of Scotland. Finlayson was probably about nine years younger than Simpson, presuming Simpson was born in 1787. Finlayson also joined the HBC and worked in the Peace River District at the same time that Simpson was in charge of the Athabasca District, and it was Finlayson who supervised the building of the new birchbark canoes that Simpson travelled out to Norway House in. In 1838 he went on furlough to London where he wed Frances Simpson’s sister, Isobel, who was another daughter of Simpson’s uncle (and father-in-law), Geddes Mackenzie Simpson.
So, here we are. We finally arrived in Red River in 1841, and as you probably know, there is an entire journey ahead of Sir George Simpson. He is planning a journey around the world, travelling through Fort Vancouver, California, the Sandwich Islands, and Sitka. From Sitka he will make his way through Russia and reach London again from the East in late 1842. It’s quite a journey, as you already know, and if you haven’t stumbled across this thread yet, you will find it here. As you can see, if you look carefully, this is the post that started this current adventure! https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/rough-notes/
If you want to return to the beginning of this short thread, go here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/sir-georges-travels/
There are no more posts in this particular series but you have lots to read.
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2026. All rights reserved.