Fur trade history books launched here

The Fort Frances Museum hosted a book launch last Wednesday evening for two new tomes on the history of the local fur trade.
Local resident Merv Ahrens presented “Lake La Pluie, 1817-1818,” the journal of Master Donald McPherson, an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Ahrens painstakingly assembled and typed out the document from the handwritten original.
“I’ve got others on the backburner, but it takes a long time to crank them through,” he laughed.
The printing was done courtesy of the Fort Frances Times. Abitibi-Consolidated donated the paper while Unisource Canada Inc. in Winnipeg donated the cover stock.
Also launched at the museum last Wednesday was “Lake Superior to Rainy Lake: Three Centuries of Fur Trade History,” edited by Jean Morrison.
Morrison, a retired historian who worked at Old Fort William in Thunder Bay for 15 years, assembled a number of articles about the fur trade and wrote an introduction to the book.
She also included a couple of articles of her own.
“The articles were largely buried in obscure academic journals,” she noted.
About 20 people attended the launch to hear Morrison read from her book and share some of the history of the fur trade in this region.
“Your area was really contested territory,” she said of Rainy River District.
“The King of England bequeathed the Hudson Bay watershed to the Hudson’s Bay Company,” Morrison noted. “The French traders used the Great Lakes watershed.
“The water in this region flows to Hudson Bay by way of Lake Winnipeg.”
The indirect water flow was the cause of conflict between the Hudson’s Bay Company traders and the French traders until 1821, when the two merged.
Morrison’s book includes an example of a Bill of Lading, which listed everything contained in a trader’s canoe, including all goods and personal provisions, as well as all the men’s names, their position in the canoe, and their final destination.
The distances the fur traders travelled are quite remarkable, Morrison noted.
“I thought it was far just driving here from Thunder Bay today. Imagine canoeing all that way, and then going up to Athabasca,” she added.
After the reading, Morrison autographed copies of the book for local residents.