By Dorthea Calverley It is difficult [now] to understand why the fur trade was so important in the 1670’s when the Gentleman Adventurers Trading into Hudson’s Bay got a charter with the slogan “Pro Pelle Cutem” – “to take skins”. Some irreverent wag said later that it meant “to skin-em” and applied equally to the… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley Throw the question “Who were the most important figures in the Canadian fur-trade?” at any group of a hundred people. The answer is predictable. There will be a chorus of “Alexander Mackenzie,” followed by solo voices naming “Twelve Foot Davis” if it is a Peace River country crowd – perhaps a “Finlay,”… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley A long time ago, when this part of the continent was green after the melting of the last great glacier, the present site of the town of Peace River was a well-known place on the oldest of all trails on this continent. About twenty-five thousand years ago, dark-skinned nomads from Asia walked… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley In 1778, less than two hundred years ago, the Peace River Country resembled an ancient castle. To the south and southwest, its walls were the Rocky Mountains. To the southeast was a band of some of the roughest country in Canada, full of muskegs, canyon-like river valleys, rocks and forests almost impenetrable… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley Unknown to the Bay men, there was sort of hole in the natural walls surrounding the Peace River country. A Northwester named Peter Pond found it. Although he is hardly known to history, perhaps he and not Alexander Mackenzie should be commemorated as the man who opened the gateway to our country…. Read More

by Dorthea Calverley Who among the Europeans first saw the Peace River? Probably, but not certainly, it was Peter Pond. Pond was a Yankee born on January 18, 1740, the son of a fur-trader of the same name. When he first appeared in the Peace River Country, he was thirty-eight, but already a man of… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley In 1787 Peter Pond’s successor paddled into the Peace River country. He was twenty-four year old Alexander Mackenzie, a “brand new partner, recently appointed to replace Peter Pond in the rich Athabasca trade department” of the newly re-organized Northwest Company. He was destined not to be the first white man on the… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley [Note: Today, we usually use the ‘Mackenzie’ spelling, but old documents bearing his signature use ‘Mac Kenzie’ about half the time.] Alexander Mackenzie took over Pond’s House from 1787 to 1789. One of his first decisions was to send two men, McLeod and Boyer, overland to meet the Beaver Indians and to… Read More

by Dorthea Calverley The Peace River, explored by Mackenzie in 1793, was not a practical route for carrying furs to the Pacific coast. In 1797 John Finlay, who gave his name to the Finlay River, was sent out to find an easier river to follow. He is thought to have built a post near present-day… Read More

By Dorthea CalverleyDuring the same years as David Thompson’s explorations, Simon Fraser was putting another river on the map — the Fraser River. By reaching its mouth he helped secure Canada against American expansion from the Columbia River mouth. Here comes another aristocratic orphan, the nephew of Baron Simon Fraser Lovatt. Simon’s father and mother… Read More