Michel Kaonassé
I fell into Michel Kaonassé’s story long before I knew how important it would be in my York Factory Express book. Kaonassé worked at Fort Alexandria under my great-grandfather Alexander…
Read moreThe Klondike Trail
The Klondike trail is very interesting to me, but not because it led gold-miners into the goldfields on the Yukon River. This was an old trail, used for the first…
Read moreThe Tin Canoe
James Evans was a Methodist missionary who set up the mission at Norway House as the result of a conversation with Governor George Simpson. According to the Dictionary of Canadian…
Read morePeter Skene Ogden’s Illness
In 1823, Peter Skene Ogden traveled west with John Work to Spokane House. We have been following John Work’s journal in the Two Canoes series: in the last of John…
Read moreCharlot Birnie
It will shock the descendants of James and Charlot Birnie to know this: that on James Birnie’s return to the Columbia district in 1826 with the incoming York Factory Express,…
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