Adventures in the West: Henry Ross Halpin, Fur Trader and Indian Agent.

Norma Hall is a historian who specializes in colonial era settlements in
Newfoundland and Manitoba at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Genealogist and historian David R. Elliott discovered a family connection to Irish-born Henry Ross Halpin, then found two incomplete memoirs of his life in Western Canada. Turning to additional sources—including Hudson’s Bay Company records, reports for the Department of Indian Affairs, and testimony from the Northwest Rebellion trial of 1885—Elliot established a historical context for Halpin’s writings. By organizing documents chronologically, with some reconfiguration to aid understanding and to accord with known history, and adding explanatory passages with editorial comment, Elliot tied the texts into this 15-chapter portrait.

As a fur trade servant, beginning 1872 at age 17, and as an Indian Affairs agent from 1885 to 1901, Halpin was perhaps overly imbued with self-importance, but during his “hardly stellar” career he participated in events central to Western Canadian history—for 62 days captive with Big Bear’s band, for example. With notes, bibliography, and index, the book illuminates Halpin’s interactions with unsung and celebrated figures of Canada’s past. The importance of familial connections and the complexity of interpersonal dynamics are suggested. Elliott’s handling of Halpin’s “version of events and his role in them” acknowledges the pain and disappointment of those subject to political and economic programs. Yet, aspects of Halpin’s story—such as his second marriage to a “prairie flower”—attest to hopes for an integrative future.

Meant for a general readership; recommended to those interested in gaining insight into obscure aspects of life at Hudson Bay Company posts and outsider perceptions of Aboriginal history.