David Thompson’s name is memorialized on monuments, rivers, and roads across Western North America. He spent most of his career with the North West Company exploring the Rocky Mountains and the Columbia River, filling in what had been an empty space on a map. On the Road with David Thompson by Joyce and Peter McCart follows […]
Spend a Day at Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site
After our first night of camping at Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site this summer, we were eager to explore. The girls were up around 8 am as usual (not with the sun, as I was worried they might be!). We tiptoed through the dew on the grass to get breakfast. By 9 am, they […]
Heritage Camping at Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site
“We’re going to camp in a tipi!” Sunshine told her grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, and anyone else we ran into. I smiled at her excitement, because I was nearly as excited as she was. Since booking our stay in the Heritage Camping at Rocky Mountain House Historic Site a few weeks before our […]
A Sketch of My Heroine: Charlotte Small
Let me introduce you to Charlotte Small, whom I’ve spent the last year or more getting to know myself. In 1799, she lived near a lake in what is now Saskatchewan. Her mother was Cree and her father was Scottish, so she was bilingual. She had an older sister, Nancy, who married John MacDonald of […]
TGCBB: Five Remarkable Canadian Women
Welcome to The Great Canadian Blog Bash! I’m delighted to be participating in this party again this year. Last year, I shared some of my favourite Canadian authors. This year, I thought I’d share some remarkable Canadian women and why they inspire me. Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill Like Jane Austen, these two sisters […]
Explore: Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site
On our whirlwind trip to Alberta and back last week, I stopped at Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site. Rocky Mountain House was founded in 1799 when the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company both sent men out to build forts and establish trade with the local tribes. Today, the archaeological remains of […]
An Interesting Biography
I borrowed Sisters in the Wilderness, a biography of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill by Charlotte Gray, from my mom for two reasons. First, I was interested in the women. I had studied their works briefly in my university Canadian literature class and I have a copy of Moodie’s book Roughing It in the Bush. […]
Returning to Charlotte Small
I’ve returned to researching David Thompson’s wife, Charlotte Small. One of the books in my reading pile is Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur Trade Society, 1670-1870 by Sylvia van Kirk. Although van Kirk mentions Charlotte a few times, they are brief references that don’t tell me much more about her than I already knew. […]
Charlotte Small
I fell in love with history in Grade 10 when I did a world history course. To me, the course was all about the stories of people who had lived so many years before. In university I pursued this interest, doing a minor in history. Yet the history books gave only a hint of the […]
