Life and Death by the Frozen Sea: The York Fort Journals of Hudson's Bay Company Governor James Knight, 1714–1717 ed. by Arthur J. Ray (review)

Hudson's Bay Company (hbc) governor and explorer James Knight comes to life in Arthur Ray's masterfully edited presentation of his York Fort (Factory) journals from 1714 to 1717. James Knight served the hbc for over forty years as a skilled tradesman, fur trader, post captain, deputy governor, shareholder, member of the governing committee in London, and, finally, Arctic explorer. Ray's introductory essay is excellent, giving not only an overview of Knight's life and service to the hbc but also an environmental history of the surrounding Hayes River tidewater area and the ethnohistory of the Indigenous peoples who lived in its hinterlands and traded at York Factory.

Many readers will be familiar with the history of the hbc (a company that has endured until today, albeit strictly as a retail department store). On 2 May 1670, a royal charter issued by King Charles ii incorporated the hbc and granted the new company a presumptive monopoly over the region drained by all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay – an area known as Rupert's Land. Examining the early years of the company, Ray describes the extreme environmental hazards that Knight and the hbc faced while establishing themselves on the Hudson Bay shoreline. The environment of the Hayes–Nelson watershed presented tremendous obstacles and threats during the two principal seasons (open water and freeze up) that ranged from countless flies and mosquitoes and a waterlogged environment in the summer to the severe winter weather of blinding blizzards and frostbite. The springtime transition from freeze up to open water was particularly hazardous with ice jamming and sudden spring flooding accounting for massive shore erosion and even the destruction of York Factory in 1715.

Beyond the important contextual information, Ray makes the case for publishing Knight's journals. Out of the voluminous holdings of the hbc Archives, which take up more than 1,500 linear metres of shelf space, Knight's writings stand apart. On the surface, daily hbc post journals can be quite boring. They provide the basic information – daily weather, the deployment of the post's labour force, arrivals and departures, and events of seasonal significance, including ice freeze up and breakup and the arrival of migratory waterfowl – which was needed by the governing committee in London to manage company affairs by long-distance correspondence once a year. Knight, however, was a keen observer who made frequent and detailed scientific observations on sedimentary layering (stratigraphy), permafrost, animal migratory patterns, aurora borealis, and parhelia (sun dogs) at York Fort for the benefit of improving company trade and operations.

Knight is undoubtedly the central focus of this publication, but historians of Indigenous North America will relish the opportunity to sink their teeth into the ethnographic data about the Indigenous peoples of the western interior of North America. In addition to the daily interactions with the local Mushkegowuk people (Swampy Cree or West Main Cree) as well as the Woodland Cree (frequently called "Upland Indians" or "Uplanders") and the Assiniboine from the Canadian Shield territory, Knight's journals reveal the diversity of Indigenous peoples as well as the enormous distances that they travelled to trade: the Inuit from the west coast of Hudson Bay; the Chipewyan (Dënesųłı'ne), Dogrib (Tłı'chǫ), and Dane-zaa (Beaver) from the Athabasca-Peace River region and the Coronation Gulf regions of the Canadian Arctic; the Nakoda (Stoney) from the Rocky Mountains; and the Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, and Crow from the northwestern plains. North America often proved too vast for European explorers – such as Pierre Gaultier de La Vérendrye, who took five years and eight months to reach Lake Winnipeg from western Lake Superior – but the large number of Native visitors, some of whom even may have had contact with peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast...