Samuel Black
Samuel Black was the oddest of all the HBC men. Black, born in 1780, was a young highlander of enormous size when he came to Canada and joined the fur…
Read moreDuelling Historians
This post is a continuation of the series I began a while ago: Fort St. James, as taken from Jamie Morton’s manuscript, “A Century of Fur Trade on Stuart Lake,”…
Read moreRivière des Roches to Great Slave Lake
The river that flowed north from Athabasca Lake was not the Mackenzie, but the Rivière des Roches, which led boats into the Slave. Somewhere north of Athabasca Lake was the…
Read moreTwo Canoes: To Trout Lake
This, the nineteenth post of this series, is the continuation of Governor Simpson’s journey west to New Caledonia in 1828. The author of the journal is Archibald McDonald, who is…
Read moreLeather Pass
As a fur trade descendant, I have always called the northern pass through the mountains “Leather Pass.” Today this is officially known as the Yellowhead, which comes from its original…
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