The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver To Hudson Bay, 1826–1849 by Nancy Marguerite Anderson

Abstract

Reviewed by: The York Factory Express: Fort Vancouver To Hudson Bay, 1826–1849 by Nancy Marguerite Anderson Kenneth Favrholdt THE YORK FACTORY EXPRESS: FORT VANCOUVER TO HUDSON BAY, 1826–1849 by Nancy Marguerite Anderson Ronsdale Press, Vancouver, B.C., 2020. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 300 pages. $24.95, paper. The York Factory Express is British Columbian author Nancy Marguerite Anderson’s second book. She writes from her family connection to the fur trade history of the West, a story that extended across the 49th parallel before the U.S.-Canada boundary was established. Anderson recounts many of the stories penned by the Hudson’s Bay Company’s “gentlemen” traders, clerks, and administrators, usually Scots, and laments the absence of the narratives of the Canadiens, Iroquois, and their mixed-blood descendants, whose job it was to power every mile of these monumental journeys, between 1826 and 1854. Anderson’s account covers up to 1849. The author has woven a detailed tapestry of geography that spans half the continent from Fort Vancouver (now Vancouver, Washington) to York Factory on Hudson Bay (present Manitoba, Canada), a distance of roughly 2,400 miles, the express averaging fifty to sixty days outbound and inbound. Varied were the number of boats (three to five) and men (upwards of forty to seventy-five). The work is rich with description about the route, interspersed with passages from the relevant journals and diaries of such gentlemen as John McLeod (1826), Aemilius Simpson (1826), Edward Ermatinger (1827–1828), James Douglas (1835), George Traill Allan (1841), and Thomas Lowe (1847–1848) — all Scots — except for métis John Charles (1849). The book takes readers traveling as the voyageurs did, down dangerous rapids, through swamps, and across arduous portages, including Athabasca Pass through the Rocky Mountains. Although Anderson uses the gentlemen’s journals to provide the description of the trips, it is the virtually nameless voyageurs whose exertions move the story along. Anderson touches on every aspect of the express voyages, describing the food of the voyageurs, the songs they sang, passengers including women and children, conveyances such as “cassettes” that held journals and correspondence, canoes and horses as well as tracking the clinker-built twenty-eight-foot-long York boats used by the Saskatchewan brigades. No furs or trade goods in bulk were transported on these trips. Halfway through the book, Anderson describes the return trip, known then as the Columbia Express. She mentions six of the gentlemen — Ermatinger, Allan, Douglas, Simpson, Lowe, and Charles — who recount the journey back to Fort Vancouver. There were many new and inexperienced men on this inbound voyage, largely Canadiens and métis, and Orkney men who originally came to York Factory on ships from London. The excellent maps by cartographer Eric Leinberger, however, do not show all the places along the express route, so it is easy for armchair travelers to get lost. The essential ninety-mile Athabasca Portage between Fort Assiniboine and Edmonton House, which Anderson mentions, is not shown on the relevant maps. An appendix of all the placenames along the route would have been useful. There are twenty-eight pages of comprehensive notes, a list of general works consulted, and an index. Many photographs and drawings illustrate the [End Page 107] difficult biannual trip each way. There are some typos in this edition, along with the omitted figure numbers to the eleven maps. A general complaint is that Anderson uses the recent Canadian term “First Nations” with reference to Indigenous people both north and south of the present border. It would have been appropriate to use the actual names of the Indigenous groups where possible. While we do not know many names of the voyageurs, whose tradition was oral, the book’s epilogue is an homage to the “invisible” voyageurs. Anderson concludes by stating: “This was a huge accomplishment and was largely due to the character of the Canadien and Iroquois men who rowed the boats in the early years, and the Métis and First Nations men who later replaced them” (p. 252). The book is a labor of love, which Anderson attributes to her personal connection to the fur traders — her great-grandfather Alexander Caulfield Anderson and her...