An unspectacular life of service

A Gentlemen of Considerable Talent: William Brown and the Fur Trade, 1811-1827
by Geoff Mynett

Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024
$26  /  9781773861524

Reviewed by Ron Verzuh

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William Brown, the “gentleman” of the book’s title does not start out as such. He was “neither important nor powerful,” writes author Geoff Mynett. In fact, he’s working-class to the roots, but he earns a certain status as a “trader” and a “factor” for the Hudson’s Bay Company as it struggles to best the North West Company (the Nor’Westers) in the quest to gain a monopoly over the Canadian fur trade.

Also unclear is his “considerable talent.” In fact, he starts his career as a “Glasgow clerk” or writer by being banished to the wilderness after joining a mutiny soon after his arrival at York Factory, the HBC’s HQ on Hudson’s Bay. After being labelled a “ringleader,” he was granted a second chance. At a remote post, he somehow survived rampant scurvy, violent fights between the Irish and Scottish Bay men, and persistent food shortages (mostly surviving on fish).

He was among the few at the outpost of Reindeer Lake who could read and write and was soon in charge. HBC journals and correspondence reveal that he was regularly chastised by his employers for his rough handling of the workers in his charge. Still, he continued to acquire knowledge and experience. For example, he learned from local indigenous fur traders that a spruce concoction acted as a treatment for scurvy.

Other lessons were to follow as Brown became associated with local First Nations traders who shrewdly played one company against the other in an effort to get the best deal possible. Brown eventually acquires a “country wife” named Josette who also instructs him in indigenous skills. She bears him a son, Daniel, during his 16-year stay (1811-1827) in the northern wilderness.

After acquitting himself well at Reindeer Lake, Brown became a seasoned member of the Company of Adventurers during one of the most turbulent periods of its history. While many events occurred far away – the defeat of Napoleon, the War of 1812, a slow end to slavery – some of the fallout had an influence on affairs at Rupert’s Land, the vast territory that the British Crown had granted to the HBC in 1670.

Brown was soon thrust into the so-called Pemmican War, a rugged and bloody trade war with the Nor’Westers of our high school history textbooks. Pemmican, by the way, was the name First Nations and Métis used to describe a concoction of dried buffalo meat, berries, and fat that kept traders alive as they wandered the rivers and portages of British North America.

The trade war soon morphed into a guerilla war that raged through Rupert’s Land in the early 1800s – and in these pages. Brown found himself fighting fellow fur traders and fellow Scots for access to the pelts that were brought to the two companies’ forts situated in this massive icebound region. Maps and illustrations are provided.

An associated historical event, the founding of the Red River Colony in 1812 by Thomas Douglas, the fifth Earl of Selkirk, also involves Brown. Originally, he left Scotland thinking he was destined to join the Scottish settlers. The Nor‘Westers and the Metis trappers rejected the settlers and violent clashes ensued. The most violent of these was the 1816 Battle of Seven Oaks when 21 Red River settlers and HBC employees were killed as well as one Nor’Wester.

The threats continued throughout Rupert’s Land and followed Brown as he moved into the Manitoba District to manage four HBC forts. The rivalry between the two companies included kidnapping, hand-to-hand combat and ambushes by war parties. Mynett describes this new assignment: “he was like a spider newly come to a broken web, darting hither and thither to mend holes.” Here he would cement his reputation for reliability, but he was soon pressing further west.

This time it was to the Athabasca District, “the fur-rich Eldorado . . . where the HBC had to challenge and defeat the North West Company if it was going to survive as a profitable company.” Brown would help them do it, but the effort of provisioning the fort at Great Slave Lake and fighting off the Nor’Westers had taken its toll.

Brown was ready to go home to Scotland when a big opportunity arose to further impress the company. He was assigned to build a fort at New Caledonia (northern B.C.) and to lead an expedition of discovery to the Pacific northwest coast. Regrettably, it ended in failure when Brown was struck with a debilitating illness that forced him to abandon the journey.

Mynett has dug deeply into HBC logs and personal journals to bring us this story of harsh competition and survival in a land of often unbearable cold and danger. He has done so by guiding us through the life of  “an ordinary Scot, trying to do his best.” Too often the stories of ordinary people cede the front lines of history to men like Lord Selkirk and the high muckamucks of the fur trade.

Brown’s was “not a spectacular life,” Mynett concludes, but one of “service, endeavour and survival.” He adds that “his determination and loyalty helped to build the land that became Canada.” And so it is with many ordinary people from our past, men and women like Brown that we will probably never know.

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Ron Verzuh is a writer and historian. [Editor’s note: Ron has recently reviewed books by John Moore, Tom Langford, Ron Thompson, John Ibbitson (ed.), Bob McDonald, and Rosemary Cornell, Adrienne Drobnies, and Tim Bray [eds.] for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

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