The Native Link: Tracing One's Roots to the Fur Trade

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

When the Rev. Mr. R.L. Taylor retired in 1963, he set out to establish the identities of his first ancestors in what is now western Canada. And an interesting lot they were! Two grandparents came ashore in 1815 at York Factory with the Selkirk settlers. A grandfather was put in irons by Louis Riel. Another great-grandfather arrived in 1846 as part of the first British garrison ever stationed in Rupert’s Land, sent during the “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” scare. When his comrade departed, he bought his way out of the army and settled by the Red River. One of his distinctions: he “was my only male ancestor who did not marry an Indian.” The Indians form an important part of Taylor’s story. He writes of forebears at Fort Churchill in the 1770s and at Brandon House a generation later, both of whom had children by Indians. Taylor stresses how valuable these Indian partners were; with their knowledge of “the ways of the wilds,” they were the “means of survival” for their European mates.

Taylor, who died in 1979, was able to trace the lives of many of these forebears through the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company. If the ancestor was not prominent enough to keep his own journal (or was not literate), Taylor follows him from post to post and writes of the life that one might reasonably expect him to have lived. He quotes extensively from these records, wisely allowing them to provide both drama and authenticity.

The book is attractively printed and illustrated, and it has a useful index. There is a fold-out family tree that is very extensive. One complaint: pages loosened and fell from this reviewer’s copy.