David Douglas’s Rockies
In 1827, botanist David Douglas travelled out of the Columbia District with Edward Ermatinger’s outgoing York Factory Express. In this section of his journal we will be reading a description…
Read morePaul Kane on the Columbia River
In this post on Paul Kane’s journey to the Pacific Slopes (otherwise known as the west side of the Rocky Mountains), we are leaving Boat Encampment and making our way…
Read moreThe York Factory Express for Booksellers
The annual York Factory Express journey to Hudson Bay, and its return as the Columbia Express, was unique to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur trade west of the Rocky Mountains…
Read moreBirchbark Canoes
From a book titled Canoe Crossings, I learned that what made birchbark canoes so special was that the grain of the bark that covered them was transverse rather than longitudinal.…
Read moreTwo Canoes: John Work comes down the Columbia River
So in the last John Work journal, he and Peter Skene Ogden had reached Boat Encampment, having come down the Big Hill from Athabasca Pass. In this bit of journal,…
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