"Hidden Country": Discovering Mina Benson Hubbard

Abstract

These words were written in 1906, and they record the thoughts of Mina Benson Hubbard as she went down the George River towards the camps of the Barren Ground People during the penultimate stage of her 1905 expe dition across Northern Labrador. Mina was referring to the ancestral lands of the Nascaupi Indians, but her words suggest that there is more at stake in her narrative than her visit to the remote, of the Nascaupi in the interior of one of the Canadian North's most unforgiving and inac cessible areas. In this search through the hidden country of Mina's life and life writing, I want to explore her diary from the 1905 expedition, two arti cles she published in 1906 about that expedition, and her 1908 book A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador. By comparing Mina's writing in the diary, articles, and book, I hope to uncover, or at the very least shed some light on, how this late-nineteenth century lady constructed and then recon structedher identity, how she presented her self (or more precisely her selves) in language, and, finally, how she performed her changing identity within the three discursive contexts available to her between 1905 and 1908.'Almost