Fur Trade Letters of Willie Traill, 1864–1894

Gratien Allaire is a professor of history at Laurentian University in
Sudbury, Ontario.

William Edward (Willie) Traill was born in 1844, the eighth child of
Thomas Traill and author Catharine Parr Traill and the nephew of Susanna
Moodie. He entered the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company as an
apprentice clerk in 1864. He was assigned to various posts, further and
further west, from Fort Ellice on the Prairies (1864–67) to Fort St.
James in the Rockies (1889–93). His postings usually lasted less than
four years, with the exception of Lac la Biche (1874–81). He left the
company in 1893 having achieved the level of chief trader for New
Caledonia (B.C.). He lived on his homestead in Meskanaw, near Prince
Albert (Saskatchewan), until his death in 1917.

Willie Traill had strong connections within the company. He married
Harriett McKay, the eldest daughter of Chief Factor William McKay, in
1869. They had 12 children; three of them died at Lac la Biche, the
victims of one of the frequent epidemics that hit Western Canada in the
1870s. The 177 letters selected by Munro carried news to his mother, his
sister, his niece, and other family members. They centred on the man,
his family, and their life in the posts: births, deaths, health, wealth,
family business, travels, home improvements, postings, promotions, and
so forth. Company business is rarely mentioned, and then only in general
terms. Current events like the flood of the Peace River in June 1888 are
sometimes described.

In the letters, the class-conscious Traill pays little attention to
Aboriginals, Metis, and French Canadians (a notable exception being the
Grey nuns who helped the family through the epidemics at Lac la Biche).
He blames the troubles of the 1880s not on the company, but on “a
corrupt government and an intriguing church,” adding that his
father-in-law’s influence on Aboriginals and Big Bear was such that
the rebellion would have been avoided had he been alive. As Willie
Traill’s letters demonstrate, he brought to each of his posts the
Victorian values of an Anglo-Saxon Protestant from Ontario.