Sleeping Island: The Story of One Man’s Travels in the Great Barren Lands of the Canadian North.

Downes, Prentice Gilbert. New York: Coward-McCann, 1943.
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A delightful book of Chipawyan and Cree folklore by a regular American summer visitor in the 1930s and early 40s, a Harvard man (AB ’33) and high school teacher at Belmont Hill School. He loved exploring the Barren Lands during his summer breaks between 1937 and 1947. Shows signs of his fairly wide reading on the history of the region, but none of his own reading on this particular voyage. Since he never overwintered his opportunities for reading were limited.

A Journal of Voyages & Travels in the Interior of North America, Between the 47th and 58th Degrees of Latitude…

Harmon, Daniel William. Andover, MA: Flagg and Gould, 1820. [See also a later edition called Sixteen Years in the Indian Country,ed. William Kaye Lamb (Toronto: Macmillan, 1957).].
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A very long sojourn (1803-1818 or so), by a Christian fundamentalist troubled by sin but trusting in God. Had a common law native wife who is not discussed very much until he finally marries and in reference to children. Tells harrowing tales of native drinking and its consequences, despite the fact that he provided liquor to them. On the death of his son, see p. 238-39.

Journals of Samuel Hearne and Philip Turnor.

Hearne, Samuel; Turnor, Philip. Edited with Introduction and Notes by J. B. Tyrrell. Toronto: The Chaplain Society, 1934.
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This volume is chiefly about the surveyors recruited to the HBC to chart the immense territory of Prince Rupert’s Land in the latter18th century. The Introduction tells of recruiting them through the good offices of mathematician William Wales of Christ’s Hospital London, who recommended Philip Turnor for one of the surveyor posts.

In Search of a Polar Continent, 1905-1907.

Harrison, Alfred H. London: Edward Arnold, 1908.
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p. 22, re the Catholic mission at Resolution: The children are not only educated but clothed and fed. The girls are taught how to sew and how to make their own clothes, as well as how to read and write; whilst the boys, who are also trained in these latter academic, if elementary, exercises, acquire a variety of crafts which will be useful—in fact indispensable—to them in afterlife.

Archives.

Hudson’s Bay Company.
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The archives, now in Winnipeg, has a mss. catalogue of the HBC library, ca1800s and later, described as a memorandum book with index at front and tabs used to list the books; lists of books borrowed by borrower (mostly committee members but includes Beechey, Franklin, and Richardson, and dates of loan. (The following list courtesy of Ann Morton, HBC)

Copy-book of Letters Outward &c. begins…. 1679-1694.

Hudson’s Bay Company. Edited by E. E. Rich. (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1948). [Hudson’s Bay Record Society, v. 11].
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This is a large and impressive compilation from the London office of the Company in London to Company officials in Lord Rupert’s land during the early years of the Company. The period includes the brief French capture of the Prince of Wales Fort at Churchill.

James Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743 and Notes and Observations on a Book Entitled

Isham, James. A Voyage to Hudsons Bay in the Dobbs Galley, 1749.Edited with an Introduction by E. E. Rich. (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1949.
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James Isham was employed by the HBC from 1732 and as chief of Fort York from 1737, According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Volume III) “Isham was at once a skilled and understanding trader, a perceptive planner and strategist, and a conscientious and observant natural historian.” He was not an expert on the fur trading business, but he did develop expertise in the subject of Indian vocabularies

The Founding of Churchill; Being the Journal of Captain James Knight, Governor-in-Chief in Hudson Bay, from the 14th of July to the 13th of September 1717.

Knight, James, Capt. Edited…by James F. Kenney. Toronto, London: J. M. Dent, 1932.
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Interest of this book is not so much for his journal, but the account in the text by Kenney of the fate of Captain Knight. After he left the HBC governorship, he organized an expedition to the west coast of Hudson Bay in search of copper and gold (cf. Frobisher and Borchgrevink), as well as for the NW Passage. Evidently his ships were damaged on the western shore of Marble Island where after two winters all the crew had died, facts which did not come to light for some time. Since he made this voyage without telling the local HBC about his activities, he was not likely to be found. (see esp. p. 75-89).

Peter Fidler’s Library: Philosophy and Science in Rupert’s Land.

Lindsay, Debra. Readings in Canadian Library History. Edited by Peter F. McNally. (Toronto: Canadian Library Association, 1986). p. 209-29.
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p. 209: Peter Fidler, Hudson’s Bay Company servant [surveyor] 1788-1822, was one of the first owners and collectors of books in Rupert’s Land. His penchant for books was not an isolated case of individualism gone berserk, but his permanent acquisition of vast numbers of books was a unique occurrence in Rupert’s Land…. Fidler’s library eventually reached five hundred volumes, a massive collection for a man of modest means.

Peter Fidler: Canada’s Forgotten Surveyor 1769-1822.

MacGregor, J. G. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966.
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Fidler was a rather obscure surveyor and mapmaker of English birth, who served the Hudson’s Bay Company for over thirty years, just beyond the 1820 amalgamation of the HBC with the North West Company. His interest here is that he was instrumental in buying books for the HBC to send from London to their various posts in Canada. This volume is confined to Fidler’s full journals of his travels for his surveying career. They make little of Fidler’s book life, but it does not that he build a personal collection of 500 volumes which he left to the Red River Colony. He had fourteen children by an illiterate Metis woman whom he finally married. He is someone you’d like to meet. Though he suffered through some very hard times he seems to have met them with a stoic resolve, and he died a rather rich man after years of £100 pay per year.