by Carol Matas
Images and Documents
Image 1: Lord Selkirk sent over several groups of settlers from Scotland to farm land in the Red River valley. This painting shows the arrival of the first wave of settlers in 1812.
Image 2: Thomas Douglas, Lord Selkirk, had earlier placed Scottish settlers in both Upper Canada and Prince Edward Island, before going ahead with settlements in the Red River area.
Image 3: Saulteaux Chief Peguis and his people were very helpful to the Red River settlers.
Image 4: Miles Macdonell, first governor of the Red River settlement, aggravated relations between the Hudson’s Bay and North West companies with his Pemmican Proclamation.
Image 5: Elaborate ceremonies normally preceded the actual trading of furs at Hudson’s Bay Company posts such as York Factory.
Image 6: This sketch of Fort Douglas, at The Forks, is from a copy of a sketch made by Lord Selkirk himself.
Image 7: Winter fishing on the ice where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet. Fort Gibraltar is shown at the left, with Fort Douglas across the river, at the right.
Image 8: A Red River cart train meets a group of York boats. The York boats were so called because they were a main form of transportation between York Factory and posts farther south.
Image 9: Fur traders often had to portage their canoes both to travel inland to collect furs and to bring them back to the post.
Image 10: A Red River cart travelling past a settler’s homestead in Manitoba.
Image 11: The drama of a buffalo hunt, using a pound to pen the huge animals, is shown in this image of an 1820s’ hunt.
Image 12: Governor Semple and other settlers fighting with a group of Métis at the Battle of Seven Oaks.
Image 13: A view of Forts Pembina and Daer, at Pembina on the Red River, in 1822.
Image 14: The original Fort Garry was built by the Hudson’s Bay Company between 1817 and 1822, at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. Upper Fort Garry, shown here, was begun in 1835 at a site to the west of the original fort.
Image 15: The Red Lake Chief, making a Speech to the Governor of the Red River settlement at Fort Douglas in 1823.
Image 16: The grant of Rupert’s Land provided the Hudson’s Bay Company with over 7,770,000 square kilometres of land.
Image 17: The route taken by the group of Selkirk settlers who reached the Forks in 1815.
Credits
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:
Cover portrait: National Gallery of Scotland, Alexander Ignatius Roche, Nell, detail (NG 1733).
Cover background (detail) and image 7: National Archives of Canada, Peter Rindisbacher, Winter fishing on ice of Assynoibain [sic] & Red River, C-001932.
Ornament: Prairie crocus, Manitoba’s provincial flower, Yüksel Hassan.
Image 1: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, J.E. Schaflein, Landing of the Selkirk Settlers, 1812, HBCA P-388 (N8196). This painting was used as the cover of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s 1924 calendar.
Image 2: Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Selkirk, Thomas Douglas (5th Earl) 2, N8752.
Image 3: Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Peter Rindisbacher, Indian [possibly Chief Pequis] [sic], N3753.
Image 4: Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Miles Macdonell 1, N16074.
Image 5: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Adam Sherriff Scott, Trading Ceremony at York Factory, 1780’s, HBCA P-420 (N11735). This painting by Adam Sherriff Scott was used as the cover of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s 1956 calendar
Image 6: Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Fort Douglas 5, from a copy of pencil sketch made by Lord Selkirk, 1817, N10109.
Image 8: Glenbow Archives, Calgary, Canada, Red River cart train, W.A. Rogers, NA-1406-47.
Image 9: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Provincial Archives of Manitoba, At the Portage. Hudson’s Bay Company’s Employés on their annual Expedition, from Picturesque Canada, Volume 1, edited by George Monro Grant, published by Belden Bros., Toronto, 1882. HBCA 1987/363-P-28/7 (N13764).
Image 10: Red River Settler’s House and Cart, National Archives of Canada, William Hind, C-13965.
Image 11: National Archives of Canada, A Buffalo Pound, George Back (Engraver: George Finden), C-033615.
Image 12: C.W. Jefferys (1869-1951), The Fight at Seven Oaks/ Watercolour over pencil on commercial board/35.7 x 47.4 cm (support)/National Archives of Canada, Ottawa (Acc. no. 1972-26-779; repro. no. C-073715). This painting was used as the cover illustration for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s 1914 calendar.
Image 13: National Archives of Canada, Peter Rindisbacher, View of the two Company Forts on the level prairie at Pembina on the Red River, C-1934.
Image 14: National Archives of Canada, Interior of Fort Garry, lithograph, C-10531.
Image 15: Toronto Public Library Historical Picture Collection, W. Day, after attributed to H. Jones after Peter Rindisbacher, The Red Lake Chief, making a Speech to the Governor of Red River at Fort Douglas in 1825, JRR 2348, Repro number T 15957.
Images 16 and 17: Maps by Paul Heersink/Paperglyphs. Map data © 2000 Government of Canada with permission from Natural Resources Canada.
For all my young cousins, a new generation of hardy Winnipeggers: Miranda and Hannah Baran; Daniel, Rebecca and Max Asper; Stephen and Jonathan Asper; Sarah and Olivia Asper; (and any new additions yet to come)
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the many experts who helped me with this manuscript: My researcher, Lewis St. George Stubbs, archival assistant at the University of Manitoba, was tireless in his quest for the facts. Dr. Jack Bumsted, Professor of History at the University of Manitoba, read the manuscript for accuracy. Anne Morten, Head of Research and Reference at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, was kind enough to answer my questions. Dr. Bill Waiser of the Department of History, University of Saskatchewan, read the final version and made many valuable suggestions. Barbara Hehner carefully checked a multitude of facts.
My editor, Sandy Bogart Johnston, worked very hard with me on the manuscript, and I thank her for all her help. And thank you to Diane Kerner for her comments as well.
About the Author
Carol Matas is one of Canada’s leading writers of historical fiction. She is particularly noted for her books about the Holocaust, such as Daniel’s Story (shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and winner of the Silver Birch Award), After the War and The Garden (both winners of the Jewish Book Award), Lisa, In My Enemy’s House and Greater Than Angels. She has written two Dear Canada books about the Holocaust and World War II, Turned Away and Pieces of the Past, both of which won the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award and received a number of other honours. And she is the author of Behind Enemy Lines, part of the I Am Canada series. But she has written books on other historical periods as well, such as Rebecca and The War Within, contemporary stories like The Lost Locket and thrillers such as Cloning Miranda and The Second Clone. Even fantasies are part of her repertoire.
Carol lives with her family in Winnipeg, so she has a keen appreciation of what the Selkirk Settlers went through in their first years on the prairie, before they were able to settle more permanently and build better shelters for themselves. “I grew up in Manitoba,” she says. “As I wrote and researched this story I couldn’t help but marvel at the strength and tenacity of the first settlers. The mosquitoes alone would have been enough to send me screaming back to civilization the first chance I had! Sometimes we have eight months of winter, and when it is thirty below, for at least a couple of them you wonder how the settlers managed, some of them like Isobel with nothing at first but a shawl for warmth.”
One of Carol’s challenges in writing this story was finding where “truth” lay amid the various — and sometimes contradictory — sources of information about the Selkirk Settlers. The Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, located in Winnipeg, provided a great wealth of information, including many original sources
. However, there were also times when source A would state the facts one way, and source B would state them another way, and Carol would have to sift through the various accounts to arrive at what actually happened to the settlers. Maps, and tracing the route the settlers took, as well as how they travelled, were another challenge. One very positive element came from this though: Carol was able to enjoy the maps her father had acquired over the years as an amateur map collector.
What was it like spending months with Isobel and the other characters in her story? Carol evidently has a fondness for them all. Fondness, and a great respect for the trials they not only endured, but succeeded in meeting with practicality and determination. “As I sit at my desk working on this book on a warm summer day, the birds singing, a breeze blowing in through the window, I say a hearty thank-you to them all. Brave souls.”
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Isobel Scott is a fictional character created by the author, and her diary is a work of fiction.
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Copyright © 2002 by Carol Matas.
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ISBN: 978-1-4431-2811-7
First e-book edition: January 2016
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Blood Upon Our Land, The North West Resistance Diary of Josephine Bouvier by Maxine Trottier
Brothers Far from Home, The World War I Diary of Eliza Bates by Jean Little
A Christmas to Remember, Tales of Comfort and Joy
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Days of Toil and Tears, The Child Labour Diary of Flora Rutherford by Sarah Ellis
The Death of My Country, The Plains of Abraham Diary of Geneviève Aubuchon by Maxine Trottier
A Desperate Road to Freedom, The Underground Railroad Diary of Julia May Jackson by Karleen Bradford
Exiles from the War, The War Guests Diary of Charlotte Mary Twiss by Jean Little
Flame and Ashes, The Great Fire Diary of Triffie Winsor by Janet McNaughton
Footsteps in the Snow, The Red River Diary of Isobel Scott by Carol Matas
Hoping for Home, Stories of Arrival
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Not a Nickel to Spare, The Great Depression Diary of Sally Cohen by Perry Nodelman
An Ocean Apart, The Gold Mountain Diary of Chin Mei-ling by Gillian Chan
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Pieces of the Past, The Holocaust Diary of Rose Rabinowitz by Carol Matas
A Prairie as Wide as the Sea, The Immigrant Diary of Ivy Weatherall by Sarah Ellis
Prisoners in the Promised Land, The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
A Rebel’s Daughter, The 1837 Rebellion Diary of Arabella Stevenson by Janet Lunn
A Ribbon of Shining Steel, The Railway Diary of Kate Cameron by Julie Lawson
A Sea of Sorrows, The Typhus Epidemic Diary of Johanna Leary by Norah McClintock
A Season for Miracles, Twelve Tales of Christmas
That Fatal Night, The Titanic Diary of Dorothy Wilton by Sarah Ellis
A Time for Giving, Ten Tales of Christmas
Torn Apart, The Internment Diary of Mary Kobayashi by Susan Aihoshi
To Stand On My Own, The Polio Epidemic Diary of Noreen Robertson by Barbara Haworth-Attard
A Trail of Broken Dreams, The Gold Rush Diary of Harriet Palmer by Barbara Haworth-Attard
Turned Away, The World War II Diary of Devorah Bernstein by Carol Matas
Where the River Takes Me, The Hudson’s Bay Company Diary of Jenna Sinclair by Julie Lawson
Whispers of War, The War of 1812 Diary of Susannah Merritt by Kit Pearson
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Go to www.scholastic.ca/dearcanada for information on the Dear Canada series — see inside the books, read an excerpt or a review, post a review, and more.