John Tod, Rebel in the Ranks
John Tod, Rebel in the Ranks

Author: Robert C. Belyk

Publisher: TouchWood Editions

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780920663424

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Canada's western wilderness was the scene of fur trader John Tod's extraordinary life. Born in a Scottish village in 1794, Tod spent 40 adventurous years working for the Hudson's Bay Company and in his later years, served on the first Legislative Council of the fledgling colony of Vancouver Island. Posted all over the Company's vast territory - York Factory, McLeod Lake, Fort Alexandria, Island Lake, Fort Kamloops - he spent most of his years in New Caledonia. A spirited and prickly man he was a free thinker, impatient with authority and distrustful of many of his superiors. He was also a lifelong and loyal friend to many of his fur-trade colleagues, especially John Work, the Ermatinger brothers and James Murray Yale. Tod saw astonishing changes in the west, from the bitter warfare between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Nor'Westers, to settlement by pioneers and the conventions of the polite colonial society. Few lives have spanned such contrasts. This definitive biography presents the picture of the unusual man in an exciting era.

In the Days of Our Grandmothers
In the Days of Our Grandmothers

Author: Mary-Ellen Kelm

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0802079601

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From Ellen Gabriel to Tantoo Cardinal, many of the faces of Aboriginal people in the media today are women. In the Days of Our Grandmothers is a collection of essays detailing how Aboriginal women have found their voice in Canadian society over the past three centuries. Collected in one volume for the first time, these essays critically situate Aboriginal women in the fur trade, missions, labour and the economy, the law, sexuality, and the politics of representation. Leading scholars in their fields demonstrate important methodologies and interpretations that have advanced the fields of Aboriginal history, women's history, and Canadian history. A scholarly introduction lays the groundwork for understanding how Aboriginal women's history has been researched and written and a comprehensive bibliography leads readers in new directions. In the Days of our Grandmothers is essential reading for students and anyone interested in Aboriginal history in Canada.

Company, Crown and Colony
Company, Crown and Colony

Author: Stephen Royle

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2010-11-30

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0857718916

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The Hudson's Bay Company was one of the great merchant companies. Granted sole trading rights to a huge part of what is now Canada, they were coerced in the mid-nineteenth century to set up a colonial administration on Vancouver Island to protect British interests at a time of growing expansionism from America to the south and possible threats from a Russian Alaska to the north. 'Company, Crown and Colony' tells the story of the challenges they faced. Drawing on rich archival resources the author provides a detailed account of this turbulent period, revealing the difficulties faced by a leading merchant company as they sought to resolve their conflicting interests of commerce and settlement in a complex situation, and providing fresh and lively insights into the emergence of a region of North America that is today one of the principal commercial centres of Canada.

Northern Lights
Northern Lights

Author: Edward J. Cowan

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2023-09-05

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1639362711

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In the tradition of Arthur Herman’s How the Scots Invented the Modern World comes a narrative that charts the remarkable—yet often overlooked or misidentified—Scottish contribution to Arctic exploration The search for the Northwest Passage is filled with stories of tragedy, adventure, courage, and endurance. It was one of the great maritime challenges of the era. It was not until the 1850’s that the first one-way partial transit of the passage was made. Previous attempts had all failed, and some, like the ill-fated attempted by Sir John Franklin in 1845 ended in tragedy with the loss of the entire expedition, which was comprised of two ships and 129 men. Northern Lights reveals Scotland’s previously unsung role in the remarkable history of Arctic exploration. There was the intrepid John Ross, an eccentric hell-raiser from Stranraer and a veteran of three Arctic expeditions; his nephew, James Clark Ross, the most experienced explorer of his generation and discoverer of the Magnetic North Pole; Dr. John Richardson of Dumfries, who became an accidental cannibal and deliberate executionaer of a murderer as well as an engaging natural historian; and Orcadian John Rae, the man who first discovered evidence of Sir John Franklin and his crew’s demise. Northern Lights also pays tribute and reveals other overlooked stories in this fascinating era of history: the Scotch Irish, the whalers, and especially the Inuit, whose unparalleled knowledge of the Arctic environment was often indispensible. For anyone fascinated by Scottish history or hungry for tales of Arctic adventure, Northern Lights is a vivid new addition to the rich tradition of polar narratives.

Old Square-Toes and His Lady
Old Square-Toes and His Lady

Author: John David Adams

Publisher: TouchWood Editions

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 192697171X

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August 12, 2003, marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir James Douglas. Although he played an integral role in British Columbia's history, in many ways Douglas remains misunderstood and an enigma. He is known for his contradictory qualities -- he was self-serving, racist, a military hawk, sometimes violent and arrogant. Yet he was also extremely community oriented, a humanitarian, brave and a devoted family member. John Adam's bestseller Old Square-Toes and His Lady: The Life of James and Amelia Douglas serves as an important source of information regarding Douglas's public and private lives. As Adams writes, [the term] old square-toes characterizes him as an unbending, stodgy, boring individual, but nothing could be further from the truth. At the pinnacle of his career, Douglas was knighted by order of Queen Victoria. Considering his modest, mixed-race beginnings in South America, his lofty status is, indeed, remarkable. Equally so is the life of his wife, Amelia. She was also of mixed blood, her mother being Cree and her father Irish. But unlike Douglas, who was educated in Scotland, she never left the northern forests until they married. Their ending up as a knight and lady of the British Empire was an unusual achievement. Old Square-Toes discusses the Douglases' diverse experiences of astonishing contrasts, from crossing North America by canoe to touring Europe by train, from Native uprisings to the frantic gold rush. Besides finding glory, they also faced grief in losing seven of their beloved children. This is a story of the adventure, heartbreak, and devotion that lies at the roots of western Canada.

The Chief Factor's Daughter
The Chief Factor's Daughter

Author: Vanessa Winn

Publisher: TouchWood Editions

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9781894898935

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Colonial Victoria in 1858 is an unruly mix of rowdy gold seekers and hustling immigrants caught in the upheaval of the fur trade giving way to the gold rush. Chief Factor John Work, an elite of the Hudson's Bay Company fur trade and husband to a country-born wife, forbids his daughters to go into the formerly quiet Fort Victoria, to protect them from its burgeoning transient population. Margaret, the eldest daughter, chafes at her father's restrictions and worries that, at 23, she is fated to be a spinster. Born of a British father and Metis mother, Margaret and her sisters belong to the upper class of the fur-trade community, though they become targets of snobbery and racism from the new settlers. But dashing naval officers and Royal Engineers still host parties and balls, and Margaret and her sisters attend, dressed in the fashionable gowns they order from England. As happens the world over, these cultural tensions lead to love and romance.

Undelivered Letters to Hudson's Bay Company Men on the Northwest Coast of America, 1830-57
Undelivered Letters to Hudson's Bay Company Men on the Northwest Coast of America, 1830-57

Author: Helen M. Buss

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0774841397

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In the early nineteenth century, when the Hudson’s Bay Company sent men to its furthest posts along the coast of North America’s Pacific Northwest, the letters of those who cared for those men followed them in the Company’s supply ships. Sometimes, these letters missed their objects – the men had returned to Britain, or deserted their ships, or died. The Company returned the correspondence to its London office and over the years amassed a file of “undelivered letters.” Many of these remained sealed for 150 years and until they were opened by archivist Judith Hudson Beattie, when the Company archives were moved to Canada. These letters tell the fascinating stories of ordinary people whose lives are rarely recounted in traditional histories. Beattie and Helen M. Buss skilfully introduce us to both the lives of the letter writers and their would-be recipients. Their commentaries frame, for contemporary readers, the words of early nineteenth century working and middle class British folk as well as letters to “voyageurs” from Quebec. The stories of their lives – fathers struggling to support a family, widowed mothers yearning to see their sons, bereft sweethearts left behind, and wives raising their children alone – reach out over two centuries to offer rare insight into the varied worlds of men and women in the early nineteenth century, many of whom became settlers in Washington, Oregon, and the new British colony of Vancouver Island.

Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws
Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws

Author: Marianne Ignace

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2017-10-31

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 0773552030

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Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws is a journey through the 10,000-year history of the Interior Plateau nation in British Columbia. Told through the lens of past and present Indigenous storytellers, this volume detail how a homeland has shaped Secwépemc existence while the Secwépemc have in turn shaped their homeland. Marianne Ignace and Ronald Ignace, with contributions from ethnobotanist Nancy Turner, archaeologist Mike Rousseau, and geographer Ken Favrholdt, compellingly weave together Secwépemc narratives about ancestors’ deeds. They demonstrate how these stories are the manifestation of Indigenous laws (stsq'ey') for social and moral conduct among humans and all sentient beings on the land, and for social and political relations within the nation and with outsiders. Breathing new life into stories about past transformations, the authors place these narratives in dialogue with written historical sources and knowledge from archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, earth science, and ethnobiology. In addition to a wealth of detail about Secwépemc land stewardship, the social and political order, and spiritual concepts and relations embedded in the Indigenous language, the book shows how between the mid-1800s and 1920s the Secwépemc people resisted devastating oppression and the theft of their land, and fought to retain political autonomy while tenaciously maintaining a connection with their homeland, ancestors, and laws. An exemplary work in collaboration, Secwépemc People, Land, and Laws points to the ways in which Indigenous laws and traditions can guide present and future social and political process among the Secwépemc and with settler society.

Ghosts
Ghosts

Author: Robert C. Belyk

Publisher: TouchWood Editions

Published: 2011-07-06

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1926971183

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The famous Victoria ghost who appeared to a tour group listening to her story, the little boy playing with a red ball in Nanaimo, the phantom “helper” in a restaurant kitchen – these are among the true stories in Robert Belyk’s new Ghosts. Encounters with entities from a different reality do occur in the rational, modern world; the experiences collected here range from the colonial days to the year 2000. Many ghosts haunt private houses, but some are associated with public places and buildings, such as Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, the Vancouver General Hospital and the Qualicum Heritage Inn on Vancouver Island. Ghosts: True Tales of Eerie Encounters is an expanded and updated collection of stories , some of which first appeared in Ghosts: True Stories from British Columbia.

Abenaki Daring
Abenaki Daring

Author: Jean Barman

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2016-10-01

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0773599681

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An Abenaki born in St Francis, Quebec, Noel Annance (1792–1869), by virtue of two of his great-grandparents having been early white captives, attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Determined to apply his privileged education, he was caught between two ways of being, neither of which accepted him among their numbers. Despite outstanding service as an officer in the War of 1812, Annance was too Indigenous to be allowed to succeed in the far west fur trade, and too schooled in outsiders’ ways to be accepted by those in charge on returning home. Annance did not crumple, but all his life dared the promise of literacy on his own behalf and on that of Indigenous peoples more generally. His doing so is tracked through his writings to government officials and others, some of which are reproduced in this volume. Annance’s life makes visible how the exclusionary policies towards Indigenous peoples, generally considered to have originated with the Indian Act of 1876, were being put in place upwards to half a century earlier. On account of his literacy, Annance’s story can be told. Recounting a life marked equally by success and failure, and by perseverance, Abenaki Daring speaks to similar barriers that to this day impede many educated Indigenous persons from realizing their life goals. To dare is no less essential than it was for Noel Annance.