The Voyageur Modern Canadian Literature 5-Book Bundle

The Silence on the Shore / Combat Journal for Place d'Armes / The Donnellys / In This Poem I Am / Canadian Exploration Literature

Hugh Garner, James Reaney, Robin Skelton, Germaine Warkentin, Scott Symons, Harold Rhenisch, Harold Rhenisch

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781459729032
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Literatur Allgemein

Voyageur Classics is a series of special versions of Canadian classics, with added material and new introductions. In this bundle we find five classic works of twentieth century fiction, drama and poetry, a period when Canada's literary identity was shaped. Originally published in 1962, The Silence on the Shore is considered by many critics to be renowned Hugh Garner's best, most ambitious novel. Originally published in 1967, Combat Journal for Place d'Armes was initially met with shock and anger by most reviewers but has become a literary touchstone. The Donnellys tells the tale of a secret society and a massacre that shocked the Canadian public, a story overlooked by the artistic community until Reaney's 1975 play elevated the events to the level of legend. In This Poem I Am presents the best of poet Robin Skelton's adventurous poetry. And Exploration Literature is a groundbreaking collection of early writing inspired by the opening of a continent, an entry point into the beginnings of a literate response to the awe and wonder inspired by an unfolding geography.

Includes

• Canadian Exploration Literature
• Combat Journal for Place d'Armes
• The Donnellys
• In This Poem I Am
• The Silence on the Shore

Canadian Exploration Literature

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction to the Second Edition

Introduction to the First Edition

Part I Discovery or Contact?

1660 Pierre-Esprit Radisson travels to Lake Superior

1690 Henry Kelsey carries the Governor’s pipe to the interior

1729–1739 The Sieur de La Vérendrye looks for the Western Sea

Part II The Great North-West in the Eighteenth Century

1743 James Isham dispels the vapours by recording his observations

1754–1755 Anthony Henday is permitted to enter the Blackfoot chief’s camp

1760–1776 Alexander Henry survives a native attack on Fort Michilimackinac, and later travels to the prairies

1769–1791 Andrew Graham becomes a scholar of Bayside life

1770–1772 Samuel Hearne journeys across the Barren Lands

1772–1773 Matthew Cocking seeks trading partners inland

1791–1792 Peter Fidler spends a winter with the Chipewyans

Part III Life and Letters among the Explorers

1771–1782 Edward Umfreville considers “The Present State of Hudson’s Bay”

1775–1788 Peter Pond describes a trader’s life in the Mackinac region

1784–1812 David Thompson imagines the Great Plains

1787–1788 Saukamapee describes native life on the plains

1800–1816 Daniel Harmon tries to make an Eden in the wilderness

Part IV An Imperial Enterprise

1789 “Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land”

1792 Captain George Vancouver carries out an Imperial agenda

1808 Simon Fraser descends a perilous river

1819–1821 Captain John Franklin is bested by the Arctic

1823 George Nelson encounters “the Dreamed”

Part V Prelude to Settlement

1830 Frances Simpson travels west

1832 Governor George Simpson satirizes fur trade personalities

1840 Letitia Hargrave: the Factor’s wife

1857–1858 Professor Henry Youle Hind visits a civilization on the wane

1857–1859 Captain John Palliser considers prairie settlement

* The list of contents is designed to outline the chronology of explorations as well as the pages on which the selections are to be found. Authors’ dates appear with the headnotes to each selection.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In compiling and annotating a large anthology like this, some of it edited from original sources, I have accumulated debts to almost every friend I have, and indeed to some I have never met. I have tried to list below all those who helped, and hope I have not forgotten anyone who assisted me in tracing a lost reference, or set me straight when I had gone astray. My first debt is to the students of my course “Exploration Writing in English Canada”, for whom the anthology was first prepared; it was their enthusiasm which convinced me it might have a wider audience. I am deeply grateful to Victoria College for material help in the form of research funds to assist my work on Radisson and Kelsey, and to the Library staff at Victoria University in the University of Toronto, especially David Brown of Readers’ Services, and at Robarts Library, University of Toronto, especially Jane Lynch of Inter-Library loan, for answering many urgent requests for books no one ever looks at. The special skills of my research assistants, Lalage Grauer and John C. Parsons, made a major contribution to the project. Phyllis Wilson and Olive Koyama of Oxford University Press were unfailingly patient as I completed what turned out to be a larger task than I anticipated. Judith Hudson Beattie, Keeper of the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, and her predecessor Shirlee Anne Smith were instantly responsive to my queries, as was Edward J. Dahl, early cartography specialist in the Cartographic and Architectural Archives Division of the National Archives of Canada. Jennifer S.H. Brown and Sylvia Van Kirk were firm supporters whenever I wearied. The typists at Oxford University Press who input most of the manuscript, and Ingrid Smith of Victoria College who did the remainder, have my particular gratitude. In addition I owe thanks to (in no particular order): the New Oxford English Dictionary project at the University of Waterloo, David Galbraith of Victoria’s Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, George Lang, Laura Peers, Henri Pilon of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, an un-named assistant in the library at Regis College, Toronto, Sean Peake, Jay Macpherson, Richard Telekey, Conrad Heidenreich, W.J. Eccles, Dennis Carter-Edwards, Ian MacLaren, Hugh MacMillan, William E. Moreau, Carolyn Podruchny, Ian Bowring, William R. Bowen, Diana Patterson, John Noble, Joan Winearls, Rivkah Zim, W. McAllister Johnson, Glyndwr Williams, Harry Duckworth, Mary A. Gallagher, Neil Semple, and John J. McCusker. The most important debt of all is acknowledged in the dedication; this volume is a retirement present to my husband, the geographer John Warkentin, who first introduced me to the writing of the explorers when he edited an anthology of his own, The Western Interior of Canada (1964), and thus dispatched me on a journey of exploration that has sometimes surprised both of us.

MATTHEW COCKING. “Matthew Cocking’s journal”, ed., Lawrence J. Burpee, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Third Series, Section 11 (1908). Used by permission of the Royal Society of Canada.

PETER FIDLER. “Journal” in The Journals of Samuel Hearne and Philip Turnor, ed. J.B. Tyrell. Publication of the Champlain Society, xxl, Toronto, 1934. Used by permission.

SIMON FRASER. From The Letters and Journals of Simon Fraser, 1806–1808, ed., with an introduction by W. Kaye Lamb (1960). Used by permission of W Kaye Lamb.

ANDREW GRAHAM. Observations on Hudson’s Bay, 1767–91, ed. Glyndwr Williams, with an introduction by Richard Glover. Publications of the Hudson’s Bay Record Society, XXVII (London, 1969). Used by permission of Keeper, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Provincial Archives.

ANTHONY HENDAY. “‘York Factory to the Blackfeet Country’: The Journal of Anthony Hendry [sic], 1754–55”; Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Third Series, Section II (1907). Used by permission of the Royal Society of Canada.

DANIEL HARMON. From Sixteen Years in the Indian Country: The Journals of Daniel William Harmon, 1800–16, ed. W. Kaye Lamb (1957). Used by permission of W Kaye Lamb.

LETITIA HARGRAVE. The Letters of Letitia Hargrave, ed. Margaret Arnett MacLeod. Publication of the Champlain Society, xxvili, Toronto, 1947. Used by permission.

SAMUEL HEARNE. From The Narrative of Samuel Hearne (ms. Stowe 307). Used by permission of the British Library Board.

JAMES ISHAM. James Isham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay, 1743, ed. E.E. Rich and A.M. Johnson. Publication of the Hudson’s Bay Record Society, xii. (Published by the Champlain Society for the Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1949.) Used by permission of Keeper, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Provincial Archives.

ALEXANDER MACKENZIE. From The Journals and Letters of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, edited by W. Kaye Lamb. Used by permission of The Council of the Hakluyt Society.

JOHN PALLISER. The Papers of the Palliser Expedition, 1857–1860. ed. Irene M. Spry. Publication of the Champlain Society, Lxiv, Toronto, 1968. Used by permission.

PETER POND. “The Narrative of Peter Pond” was transcribed by the Minnesota Historical Society especially for publication in a reprint edition of Five Fur Traders of the Northwest, edited by Charles M. Gates, copyright 1965 by the Minnesota Historical Society. The original Pond document is held by Yale University. Used by permission of the Minnesota Historical Society.

PIERRE ESPRIT RADISSON. MS. Rawlinson A 329. Used by permission of Keeper of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

FRANCES SIMPSON. “Journal of a Voyage from Montreal, thro’ the Interior of Canada, to York Factory on the Shores of Hudson’s Bay” (1830). Winnipeg: Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, D6/4. Used by permission of Keeper, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Provincial Archives.

SIR GEORGE SIMPSON. “The Character Book of Governor George Simpson” in Hudson’s Bay Miscellany 1670–1870, ed. Glyndwr Williams. Publication of the Hudson’s Bay Record Society, XXX (Winnipeg, 1975). Used by permission of Keeper, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Manitoba Provincial Archives.

DAVID THOMPSON. David Thompson’s Narrative, 1784–1812, second edition, ed. Richard Glover. Publications of the Champlain Society, XL, Toronto, 1962. Used by permission.

GEORGE VANCOUVER. The Voyage of Captain George Vancouver 1791–1795, ed. W. Kaye Lamb. 4 volumes. London:The Hakluyt Society, 1984. Used by permission of The Council of the Hakluyt Society.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION

When Canadian Exploration Literature: An Anthology was published in 1993, it was itself the outcome of an exploration. Much had been written in previous decades — indeed, centuries — about exploration in general and Canadian exploration in particular, but it was in a historical tradition even then disappearing. The eighties and nineties were the age of “theory”; new concepts of Native culture, European discourse, gender socializing, all were in the air, and were being vigorously debated not only in the literature of discovery but in many academic fields across all the continents. In 1983 my article on exploration writing in English for the Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature had caused much interest; I was receiving inquiries about particular explorers, and a couple of doctoral students arrived at my door with projects. For all of us, two vital questions were emerging: what had the explorers actually written, and in what ways were we reading it?

This anthology emerged from my investigation of these questions in a one-term course in the English department at the University of Toronto. None of the students had ever read any material like this before, and they were entranced; “Why,” they repeatedly asked, “didn’t we read these texts in school, instead of just talking about them?” Or worse still, just hearing about them? Nevertheless, publishing Canadian Exploration Literature was an act of faith by William Toye of Oxford University Press. He was vindicated; the collection was enthusiastically reviewed, and remained in print for a decade. Now that Dundurn Press has shown similar faith in the project, it’s time to consider the original parameters of the book, ask what has been accomplished in further research on its authors, and survey the development of writing about exploration and discovery since the early 1990s.

If I were reviewing Canadian Exploration Literature today, I too would welcome it enthusiastically, but I would also ask (though none of the original reviewers did), “Why are these explorers primarily writing about western and northern Canada? Where is W.E. Cormack crossing Newfoundland on his perilous journey in 1822? What about the magisterial figure of Champlain, and why hasn’t some of the rich material in the Jesuit Relations been quarried for excerpts? Explorers like Thomas James and the Baron de Lahontan deserve to be represented too.” I’m being overly severe, because we all know that both courses and books have their limits, and this was already a big book; clearly, I had to make some choices. On reflection I would make the same ones again, because the results enabled readers to engage in considerable depth with a substantial body of writing that issued from a single very large, yet varied, territory, the west and north of Canada, that existed vibrantly on the edge of colonial expansion for two centuries. “Rupert’s Land,” as it is sometimes called, remains a superb laboratory for the study of all those questions about the Native experience, the explorer’s self-fashioning, gender identity, material culture, and geographical thought that have engaged the interest of the field over the past decade.

On a worldwide scale, the study of exploration and discovery has expanded enormously, as witnessed by the frequency with which encyclopedias and handbooks on travel and exploration, both early and modern, have been emerging from major publishers. They address a growing hunger in the general reader for detailed, factual information about the lives of the personalities involved in exploration, today not only the travellers themselves but the entrepreneurs, collectors, scientists, and government officials who sent them on their way, the women who travelled with them (like William Stuart’s Dene guide Thanadelthur), or those who stayed home and worried (like Lady Jane Franklin). There has been a marked broadening of horizons; in 2001 Carolyn Podruchny and I edited Decentring the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multidisciplinary Perspective, a collection of essays by, among others, Selma Barkham, Natalie Zemon Davis, Denys Delâge, Olive Dickason, and Réal Ouellet, that sought by reversing the accustomed angle of vision to consider how the encounter with Canada had affected the Europeans who first arrived here.

Most noteworthy, the Native populations the explorers encountered have begun to speak vigorously in their own voices about how it feels to be explored. John Long (for James Bay) and Wendy Wickwire (for the West Coast) have studied the oral narratives — often transmitted over centuries — of the encounters of Natives with European explorers. Samuel Hearne’s famous account of the massacre at Bloody Fall is now companioned by Robin McGrath’s article on the numerous Inuit versions of that story. Jennifer Brown and Elizabeth Vibert’s Reading Beyond Words and Laura Murray and Keren Rice’s collection Talking on the Page: Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts have both adjusted the emphasis on solely European discourse so as to focus on Native and Métis language and narrative.

The ecological movement also has led us to consider the effects of European incursion on landscapes that were routinely thought to be exploitable by extraction industries. Medical geographers like Jody Decker search the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company for epidemiological information. The great trading companies themselves are examined by economists like Perry Gauci and H.V. Bowen. There is hardly an area of study today that does not have scholars and writers thinking about the history, modes, and consequences of European expansionism of whatever sort. Perhaps as a result, “exploration” has become a pervasive metaphor for the very process of critical inquiry itself.¹

How we think about the writing of exploration narrative has also changed, in part because of what has been described as the “death of theory.” This is a rumour that has been greatly exaggerated, but c...