A selection of Colin Robertson's letters preserved in the Hudson's Bay Company archives. Appendices include biographies and supplementary letters and documents.

Fur trade scholarship has changed considerably in recent years. The tempo of research has quickened and the field has become more multidisciplinary, bringing together scholars in archaeology, economics, ethnohistory, geography, history, and anthropology. The papers in this volume reflect recent developments in several specific areas of research: mapping, native cultures, social and labour history, personalities, the Pacific coast, and economics. The moving of the Hudson's Bay Archives from London to Winnipeg in 1974 has patriated an incredibly rich source of information on many aspects of Canadian history, and the effects of this superb collection being available to Canadian scholars are just beginning to be felt. In this volume we can see that the history of the fur trade in Canada is not merely the story of the world's first great multi-national – the Hudson's Bay Company – but a study of a complex society during a period of more than two centuries. Languages, customs, transportation, personalities, marriage, and even sex are looked at in the wide-ranging papers in this book.

In 1670, the ancient homeland of the Cree and Ojibwe people of Hudson Bay became known to the English entrepreneurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company as Rupert’s Land, after the founder and absentee landlord, Prince Rupert. For four decades, Jennifer S. H. Brown has examined the complex relationships that developed among the newcomers and the Algonquian communities—who hosted and tolerated the fur traders—and later, the missionaries, anthropologists, and others who found their way into Indigenous lives and territories. The eighteen essays gathered in this book explore Brown’s investigations into the surprising range of interactions among Indigenous people and newcomers as they met or observed one another from a distance, and as they competed, compromised, and rejected or adapted to change. While diverse in their subject matter, the essays have thematic unity in their focus on the old HBC territory and its peoples from the 1600s to the present. More than an anthology, the chapters of An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land provide examples of Brown’s exceptional skill in the close study of texts, including oral documents, images, artifacts, and other cultural expressions. The volume as a whole represents the scholarly evolution of one of the leading ethnohistorians in Canada and the United States.

Initially highly secretive about all of its activities, the HBC was by 1870 an exceptionally generous patron of science. Aware of the ways that a commitment to scientific research could burnish its corporate reputation, the company participated in intricate symbiotic networks that linked the HBC as a corporation with individuals and scientific organizations in England, Scotland, and the United States. The pursuit of scientific knowledge could bring wealth and influence, along with tribute, fame, and renown, but science also brought less tangible benefits: adventure, health, happiness, male companionship, self-improvement, or a sense of meaning.

In 1835 the map of the Arctic coast of North America was still far from complete, with unmapped gaps of 280km from Return Reef to Point Barrow in Alaska and 550km from Point Turnagain to Boothia Peninsula in the Central Canadian Arctic. The Hudson's Bay Company developed a plan to fill the gaps and two of the Company's officers were chosen to carry it out: the veteran Chief Factor Peter Dease – efficient, competent, steady, and with an excellent rapport with Indians and the "servants," mostly Métis – and Thomas Simpson, young, energetic, ambitious, arrogant, and cousin and secretary to George Simpson, the Company's governor in North America. Over a three-year period from 1837 to 1939, operating from a base-camp at Fort Confidence on Great Bear Lake, the expedition achieved its goal. Despite serious problems with sea ice, Dease and Simpson, in some of the longest small-boat voyages in the history of the Arctic, mapped the remaining gaps in a model operation of efficient, economical, and safe exploration. Thomas Simpson's narrative, the standard source on the expedition, claimed the expedition's success for himself, stating "Dease is a worthy, indolent, illiterate soul, and moves just as I give the impulse." In From Barrow to Boothia William Barr shows that Dease's contribution was absolutely crucial to the expedition's success and makes Dease's sober, sensible, and modest account of the expedition available. Dease's journal, reproduced in full, is supplemented by a brief introduction to each section and detailed annotations that clarify and elaborate the text. By including relevant correspondence to and from expedition members, Barr captures the original words of the participants, offering insights into the character of both Dease and Simpson and making clear what really happened on this successful expedition.

Compulsively readable, this first social history of the opening up of the Canadian West is a triumph of historical detective work and gives us Siggins at the top of her game. While researching the biography of Louis Riel, Maggie Siggins became aware of a figure lurking in the background who had had a profound influence on the great Canadian reformer. This was his grand-mother Marie-Anne Lagimodière, née Gaboury. As Siggins’ research progressed, she came to regard Marie-Anne as the most exceptional Canadian woman of the nineteenth century. The perils of Laura Secord and Susanna Moodie paled in comparison, yet she remains largely unknown. Beautiful and rebellious, Marie-Anne was still unmarried at twenty-five—unheard of in 1800s Quebec habitant society. Furthermore, once she did marry Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière, she insisted on accompanying her fur trapper husband to the uncharted wilderness of western Canada. The year was 1807, and no European woman had yet ventured west of the Great Lakes region. For the next thirty years, she would live among the native people or at fur-trading forts from Pembina to Edmonton House, leading an undoubtedly difficult life but one with freedoms unknown to women in western societies of her time. Drawing from primary sources, Siggins paints a vivid portrait of life in the West, from survival on the plains and bison hunts to the tribal warfare triggered by the fur-trade economy. Through it all, Marie-Anne survived and thrived, living to ninety-six, the matriarch of a large and diverse family whose descendants still live in Manitoba.

"Including a new article "The Swedes in Canada's national game: they changed the face of pro hockey" by Charles Wilkins."

From the author of Ninety Degrees North, a spellbinding account of how officers of the British Navy explored the world after the Napoleonic Wars. In 1816, John Barrow, second secretary to the British admiralty, launched the most ambitious program of exploration the world has ever seen. For the next thirty years, his handpicked teams of elite British naval officers scoured the globe from the Arctic to Antarctica, their mission: to fill the blanks that littered the atlases of the day. Barrow’s Boys is the spellbinding story of these adventurers, the perils they faced—including eating mice, their shoes, and even each other to survive—and the challenges they overcame on their odysseys into the unknown. Many of these expeditions are considered the greatest in history, and here they’ve been collected into one volume that captures the full sweep of Barrow’s program. “Here is all the adventure you could want, stirringly and generously told.” —Anthony Brandt, National Geographic Adventure “History at its most romantic.” —The Columbus Dispatch “A sure bet for fans of Caroline Alexander’s The Endurance, this captivating survey of England’s exploration during the nineteenth century illuminates a host of forgotten personalities.” —Publishers Weekly “Travel history of the best kind: entertaining, informed and opinionated.” —The Sunday Times