Northern Trader

H.S.M. Kemp

• Publisher: U of R Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780889773165
• eBook ISBN: 9780889773158
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

With previously unpublished photographs, this new edition of Northern Trader is a vivid personal memoir and valuable primary account of the last days of the fur trade. Harold Kemp recounts the routines and rhythms of that long-lost way of life and paints a portrait of the north as a "vast region of infinite allure."In palpable, often gripping prose, Kemp depicts life on the trail in all seasons: paddling and portaging freight canoes, using muzzle-loaders, running on snowshoes to break trails for dogs pulling toboggans, and making camp at the end of an exhausting day.A gifted writer, Kemp creates distinctive portraits of those he encounters, including the Cree people among whom he lived, whose language he spoke, whose skills he admired, and whose customs he respected.

Northern Trader

the last days of the fur trade

H. S. M. Kemp

New Edition

© 2014 Estate of H. S. M. Kemp.

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means —graphic, electronic, or mechanical — without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or placement in information storage and retrieval systems of any sort shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright.

First published 1956.

Printed and bound in Canada at Friesens.
The text of this book is printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with earth-friendly vegetable-based inks.

Cover design: Duncan Campbell, University of Regina Press.
Editor for the Press: David McLennan, University of Regina Press.
Text Design: John van der Woude Designs.
All photos in this volume, including cover images, are from the Harold Kemp Collection.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Kemp, H. S. M. (Harold Stuart Miller), 1892-1982, author
Northern trader : the last days of the fur trade / H.S.M. Kemp. -- New edition.

Reprint of: Northern trader / H.S.M. Kemp. -- Toronto : Ryerson Press, ©1956.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
isbn 978-0-88977-316-5 (pbk.).--isbn 978-0-88977-328-8 (pdf).--
isbn 978-0-88977-315-8 (html)

1. Kemp, H. S. M. (Harold Stuart Miller), 1892-1982. 2. Fur traders--Saskatchewan--Biography. 3. Fur trade--Saskatchewan. 4. Saskatchewan--Social life and customs. I. Title.

FC3522.1.K44A3 2014 971.24’02092 C2014-906061-0 C2014-906062-9

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

University of Regina Press, University of Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, S4S 0A2
tel: [phone] fax: [phone]
web: www.uofrpress.ca

The University of Regina Press acknowledges the support of the Creative Industry Growth and Sustainability program, made possible through funding provided to the Saskatchewan Arts Board by the Government of Saskatchewan through the Ministry of Parks, Culture, and Sport. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

To Elsie

Contents

Publisher’s Preface

Foreword to the 2014 Edition

Author’s Introduction

chapter one

“Freeze-up Travel,” 1911

chapter two

The Hudson’s Bay Company; The Treaty Party, 1911; John H. Reid

chapter three

Crees and Chipewyans; Northern Missionaries; Andrée’s Balloon; York Boat Travel

chapter four

Revillon Frères; Cumberland House; The “Indian” Life; Lac la Ronge; Epidemic

chapter five

North with the Family; Of Eggs and Oranges; Ile à la Crosse

chapter six

Red Earth Post; A Primitive People; Birch Bark Canoes; A Double Wedding

chapter seven

Of Muzzle-loaders; The Cree Calendar; A Birth in the Family; A Brush with the Law

chapter eight

The Logjam; Indian Honesty; Farewell to Red Earth

chapter nine

Muskeg Travel; River Travel; Stanley Post; The Organist

chapter ten

An Ancient Church; Of Fish and Foxes; The “Haggling” Indian; Kitimakis; Winter Trading

chapter eleven

Six “Average” Dogs; Of “Balls of Fire” and Weetigoes; White and Indian “Ethics”

chapter twelve

Summer Returns; Village Life; Elsie and her Patients

chapter thirteen

Dangers of the Trail; Of Phobias and Strange Beliefs

chapter fourteen

A Holiday and Return; A New Look for an Old Church

chapter fifteen

Education, Devotion, and Veneration; Joe Visintin and R. D. Brooks

chapter sixteen

Winter Diversions; Timber Wolves and a Mad Dog; Autumn Fishing

chapter seventeen

We Leave the North; Montreal Lake Again; The Waskesiu River

chapter eighteen

1947; We Revisit Old Scenes; And Meet Old Friends

chapter nineteen

“Civilization” Reaches the North; L’Envoi

Publisher’s Preface

The re-publication of Northern Trader in this handsome edition has been brought about by the dedicated efforts of a number of people. The enterprise began in 2010, when Graham Guest, Archival Historian with Northern Saskatchewan Archives in La Ronge, answering a desire he’d felt since first reading it years ago, determined to bring this classic book back into print, illustrated with photographs taken by Harold Kemp during his fur-trading years, images that had been preserved by his son Everett. Everett, who died in 2011, had been living with his son, Trevor, who became guardian of the remarkable collection. Harold’s only surviving child, Betty Decker, enthusiastically supported the book’s revival and has represented the family in negotiating a publication agreement. Alison Scanlon, Everett Kemp’s daughter, has given her unstinting support and provided a most helpful review of the photographs selected for the book. Thanks are also owed to Deb Greening, a personal friend of Everett, and Lois Dalby, who in the 1970s asked Harold for copies of some of his photographs and later donated them to Northern Saskatchewan Archives. More recently, Doug Chisholm has scanned more of the photographs and arranged permission for the Archives to also make copies. There are still people living in Stanley Mission who remember Harold and Elsie Kemp and were able to identify individuals in the pictures he took there; Joe and Mary Roberts were especially helpful in this research in Stanley. Robert Cockburn, of the University of New Brunswick, provided valuable support throughout the project and contributed the Foreword. Les Oystryk’s knowledge of the history of Northern Saskatchewan, and the fur trade, has been an invaluable asset to the entire undertaking, and he coordinated arrangements with David McLennan, Editor of University of Regina Press. Everyone involved in the project is indebted to David, who recognised the literary and historical qualities of Northern Trader and has overseen its publication in this new, illustrated edition.

Foreword to the 2014 Edition

During my school day in the early years of the present century, the fur trade stories of R. M. Ballantyne, an ex-hbc clerk, were at the height of their popularity. … Certainly I read them avidly, for who could fail to be thrilled with the romance of the fur trade? I was thus in a receptive mood to the merest suggestion that I should become a fur trader.

— J. W. Anderson, Fur Trader’s Story (1961)

To most twenty-first-century Canadians, the phrase “the romance of the fur trade” will seem to be not simply an anachronism, but a contradiction in terms, an expression evoking not far northern “romance,” but instead convictions about the exploitation of both wild animals and native peoples by powerful fur-trading companies and the men who served them. Our thinking having been shaped by the revisionist impulses of the last forty years, we now tend to judge previous generations harshly because they did not share the progressive values deemed mandatory in 2014. Those holding this attitude toward the dead of earlier generations would do well to recall this sentence of L. P. Hartley’s: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” This famous assertion is unquestionably true. Had the reader been, like Harold Kemp, sixteen years old in Saskatchewan early in the twentieth century and, like him, of adventurous temperament and an avid reader of Ballantyne, James Fenimore Cooper, and Stewart Edward White, he almost certainly would have believed the North to be, as Kemp did, “a land of wonder and romance,” a vast region of infinite allure in which a young man could test his character, make his name, and earn a living far distant from the mundane familiarities of town or city.

H. S. M. Kemp, born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1892, came out to Saskatchewan as a boy ...

Table of contents

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