The Fort Langley Journals

Barry M. Gough is a professor of history at Wilfrid Laurier University
and the author of The Northwest Coast: British Navigation, Trade, and
Discoveries to 1812 and First Across the Continent: Sir Alexander
Mackenzie.

Fort Langley was the first Hudson’s Bay Company post on the lower
northwest coast of what became, in 1858, the Crown colony of British
Columbia. It predates Victoria but was not the first British or Canadian
fur post on that coast. Its value was dictated by geography and trade
strategy, for it lay at the upper limit of navigation (in the pre-steam
era) on the Fraser River. Here, as suggested by exploring and surveying
fur traders, was the best place to build a multipurpose post. Good soil,
navigational capabilities, timber, and agreeable local Native
inhabitants made that choice an excellent one, and until New Westminster
supplanted Fort Langley as the nexus of trade between Pacific tidewater
and interior business, the place did very well. The new colony was
proclaimed there in November 1858. The fur-trade records of this
remarkable post have long been of great value to the interested student.
Now those of the founding and formative years are available to the
general reader.

This edition has many photos and line drawings (though they are of
mixed quality), and the editor and publisher have been able to print
many fine photographic portraits of some of the key persons mentioned in
the text. Extensive notes (for the researcher, footnotes would have been
preferable), a bibliography, and a serviceable index complete this
handsome book.