In Quest of Fur: The Travel Journal of William O.K. Ross, 1909 (review)

This book owes its existence to the McCord Museum of Canadian History with its collection of historically important personal journals, diaries, and photographs, and to the meticulous research of retired anthropologist Philip Smith.

Smith has reproduced the diary of William Ross (1864-1942), an obscure independent fur trader, travelling along the north shore of the St Lawrence River, the Gulf of St Lawrence, the Strait of Belle Isle, and ultimately crossing the strait amid ice floes and treacherous currents to end his 'quest for fur' in Newfoundland. It's the spring of 1909. Queen Victoria has departed the stage. The First World War has yet to lay Europe to waste. The Laurier government is limping to the finish line, and in the Dominion these are sleepy times. Were it not for Smith's meticulous investigation of people, places, and the few events noted in Ross's bland, matter-of-fact account of his whereabouts, like 1909, this diary might best be described as quite unremarkable.

One learns nothing about the fur trade from Ross's account of his trip. What we do learn, we owe to Philip Smith. The introduction and footnotes (220 of them) are the real substance of the text. The footnotes serve a diary of fifty handwritten pages, reproduced and reduced to a fourteen-page appendix to the text. The diary acts as a template serving Smith's research, and not the other way around. The text will interest anyone researching the names, families, and communities along Ross's route.

Smith treats the diary as cause for painstaking detective work, investigating the background of every individual mentioned by Ross and every community (often little more than a couple of log buildings) through which he passed. 'The 1901 Census lists an Adolphe Thériault, born in 1841, telegraph operator (CC1901c, Moisie.Sept-Iles, p.14) Appointed in 1888, his salary was $180.00 in 1909' (96). This biographical entry is typical of Smith's footnotes.

I struggled with the purpose served by the text. The footnotes don't deal with events, but rather, as illustrated, with names, dates, places, and the odd bit of information about people - their occupations, inclinations, and communities in which they lived. We do end up with some information on what travel was like by dog team, the technical and environmental problems addressed. Smith also comments on Ross's style of writing, grammar, and vocabulary. But Ross's diary is unremarkable. He reveals nothing of himself. There are no musings, no words tying his personal struggle to earn a living to the distemper of the times. Just 'comings and goings.' 'I put up at Mr. Goff's and took the steamer next day as she had just arrived. I sailed down to Flower's Cove and as he could not get across I came up to Bay of Islands, bought some fur and again to the steamer. Still the captain could not cross the Straights: I got off at Flower's Cove, stayed at Mrs. Norman's, then walked ten miles down to green Brook, bought some fur and walked back to Savage Cove and spent the night with Mr. Way' (73-74). This excerpt is perfectly illustrative of Ross's style. As for the buying of furs, this sample is also exemplary of information provided the reader. The value of the text is found in the prodigious research of the editor.

Ross apparently took photos en route with a Kodak camera. Smith notes that these are preserved in the Notman Photographic Archives at the McCord Museum. It is disappointing that only one of Ross's photographs has been reproduced, along with several portraits taken many years before his trip. Other photos would have contributed to the sensibility the reader acquires for the space and time travelled by Ross. And that is perhaps the strength of the text. One does move...