Journey to York Factory

My last stint of fieldwork this summer had me checking off a box on my bucket list, I finally made it to York Factory! Why did I want to go there so badly? Well, not only is it one of the most important Hudson’s Bay Company sites, it was also the entry-point for early immigration to our province and beyond, I knew I had to see if for myself.

In partnership with Parks Canada, York Factory’s current custodians as it is now a National Historic Site, Kevin Brownlee and I set out with a fantastic videography duo (Kevin and Chris Nikkel) from Five Door Films to try and capture the essence of the site and bring it back for our Museum visitors.

York Factory is located near the mouth of the Hayes River, it’s not the most convenient location for most Manitobans or tourists to visit. That said, the site and surrounding environment is INCREDIBLE so if you ever have the chance to travel up that way, jump on it!

Our journey to the site was just as amazing as the site itself, we opted to travel by boat so we arranged our trip with Clint from Nelson River Adventures. Clint was incredibly helpful with the planning and logistics, and he even arranged our transportation from the Gillam airport to his boat launch.

The Nelson River was very scenic, we went through some rapids, saw eagles flying overhead, and made a quick stop on Gillam Island to inspect a plaque in honour of Thomas Button (the first European to set foot in Manitoba in 1612, and the one to give the Nelson River its name).

As we came to the mouth of the Nelson a bank of fog rolled in, making old Port Nelson look extra creepy. In 1912 the Canadian Government had selected this site over Churchill for their port on Hudson Bay and planned to link it with the Hudson Bay Railway. There were many reasons why this attempt was unsuccessful (too many for this post!) resulting in the abandonment of the site in 1918. Now all that remains is a wrecked dredging ship, and the truss bridge out to a man-made island.

The fog persisted as we emerged into Hudson Bay, and the sea was angry! It was just as I imagined the Bay to be, I would have been disappointed if it was smooth and calm. The boat has to swing out wide into the bay to avoid the shallows of Marsh Point between the Nelson and Hayes rivers. Clint deftly handled the waves while we enjoyed the bumpy ride.

Eventually we made our way around the point and down into the Hayes. Claude and Kyle (Parks Canada site manager and summer student) were waiting for us at the dock and helped us unload all of our gear. We’d made it, and while the journey itself was exciting, we were in for a lot more during our week-long stay!

After climbing up the steep steps from the dock this is the view I was greeted with! The Depot is in the foreground and the Parks Canada staff house in the distance.

Boreal forest archaeology is very different from my experiences in the arctic, the biggest thing of course being the trees and massive roots that run through our excavation units. Root clippers quickly became my best friend, but when they fail there’s always the good old chainsaw to take care of a few stumps!

My crew worked hard to try and delineate the post, and half-way through our excavation we realized that the building was not oriented perfectly East-West, but rather on an angle of Northwest-Southeast to the shoreline. We were able to find some remnants of the exterior walls, and the floor boards were fairly well-preserved.

We didn’t find a ton of artifacts, but we also didn’t excavate the area immediately around the hearth (stone chimney) or the cellar. Perhaps next year we’ll find all the goodies! We did recover enough artifacts for me to get a sense of the date of occupation, it seems like late 18th century but I’ll have a better idea once the artifacts are cleaned up and processed in the lab.

Of course fieldwork is not all-work, I caught my first pickerel (delicious) and on one fishing trip witnessed how quickly a forest fire can spread (scary!). On my way back to Winnipeg I made sure to stop in Thompson to clean my filthy truck, and made a quick side trip to Pisew Falls (highly recommended, it’s gorgeous!).

My goals for this season were to determine the limits of the site, by identifying the walls of the post and any related features outside of visible structure, and to acquire enough artifacts to be able to figure out the date of the site. I want to know if it was occupied at the same time as the other nearby post, was it also HBC or their rivals the Northwest Company? There is much to learn from any new archaeological site, and this one will be no different!

Summer fieldwork has begun, which means many of us Curators are out and about conducting our research. My fieldwork has me working in Northern Manitoba, for the first time! I spent some time in the evenings writing up blog posts so I could post when I returned from the field, here’s the first installment.

My first trip north was mid-June with Kevin Brownlee (Curator of Archaeology) as we are working on a joint project that will have us partnering up with Parks Canada and heading out to York Factory National Historic Site this August. We wanted to connect with communities that used to reside at York Factory to talk about their connection to the coast, York Factory, and ask them how they’d like to see their part of Manitoba represented in our museum.

With the help of a very passionate local historian Flora Beardy*, we made an appointment with Chief and Council for York Factory First Nation in York Landing to start the discussion. They were receptive to the project and encouraged us to connect with folks working in the Implementation Office who were already compiling stories and information. They also informed us that many of their band members live in Churchill so it looks like I’ll finally get to go there too!

There are other communities we still need to meet with, but we’ve got the ball rolling and I’m excited to see how this all unfolds.

*Flora compiled and edited a number of oral histories with Robert Coutts and published ‘Voices from Hudson Bay: Cree Stories from York Factory’, a book I highly recommend.

Okay, so artifacts can’t really smile but they are regularly involved in photo shoots, and with the right photographer these pieces of history can really shine.

One way we preserve our collections is by properly documenting the artefacts through photography. We can then use these photos for research, exhibits, publications, and to provide a visual in our database.

Taking pictures of artifacts is not easy. You’d think it would be because the thing doesn’t move around like a human or animal subject, but trust me when I say it’s not. That’s why I hire a professional to assist when I want high-quality photographs of the HBC Museum Collection.

Rob Barrow is a Winnipeg photographer with extensive experience running photo shoots for artifacts. Recently I asked him to come in to snap some pictures of artifacts that are currently on display in the HBC Gallery since the cases were being opened for regular cleaning and maintenance.

Although I know artifacts aren’t the only thing Rob photographs, he has a real knack for this. He gets the lighting just right, knows where to zoom in for some detailed shots, and can even make the most mundane piece shine like a star. He might even put the artifacts at ease…although I have yet to hear him utter cliche phrases like “work it, work it” or “you’re a tiger” but maybe he waits until I’m gone to offer such motivation. As someone who speaks to the artifacts in her collection I am not judging one bit!

Check out these recent photos and see for yourself.

No, this post isn’t about a wedding, but that old saying works equally as well for our new permanent exhibit leading into the Nonsuch Gallery!

Despite the fact that the Nonsuch is one of our biggest attractions at the museum, some people were missing it entirely due to some poorly positioned carpet arrows and a drab entryway. Last fall I sat down with our amazing designer Stephanie Whitehouse to figure out how to tackle this problem. We decided that we could not only improve the wayfinding to the Nonsuch Gallery and well-hidden bathrooms, but also put more of the HBC Museum Collection on display, win-win!

You can see that the black wall with dusty old model of our Parklands Gallery needed an update. And even when you stepped up and looked to the right (towards the Nonsuch) the area was a bit dark and uninviting. No wonder people were turning left and missing it all together!

The finished product is the result of an amazing collaboration between design, productions (carpentry/lighting), conservation, and curatorial.

Now when you emerge from the Boreal Forest Gallery you round the corner and see this:

Something Old: the selection of artifacts from the HBC Museum Collection from various ships used by the Company.

Something New: the signage, lights, and new exhibit space.

Something Borrowed: the pipe and pocket telescope in the little cubby are borrowed from the History collection.

Something Blue: the fabulous blue paint colour that takes you all the way to the Nonsuch.

Here are a few pics from our installation day:

Our lovely designer Steph was behind the lens for these photos, how convenient 😉

Next time you’re at the museum be sure to slow down when you round that corner out of the Boreal Forest Gallery and check out our recent addition!

Shout out to everyone involved:

Stephanie Whitehouse (Designer); Marc Hebert (Carpentry); Carolyn Sirett (Conservation); Bert Valentin (Productions); Sean Workman (Productions); and Holly Durawa (summer intern from U of T’s Museum Studies Program, she assisted with artifact selection and label copy!).

On September 30th we participated in a lovely anniversary celebration with our friends at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives and Canada’s National History Society to acknowledge two important events: 40 years since the transfer of the archival records to the Manitoba Archives; and 20 years since the HBC officially donated the archives to the Province of Manitoba, and the artifacts to the Manitoba Museum.

The final product was two large murals, approximately 52′ long by 10′ wide, that were placed above the banks of elevators on the main floor.  Many Winnipeggers will probably recognize The Pioneer at Fort Garry, 1861 as it remained on display until January 2014, but the Nonsuch at Fort Charles had a much shorter display period (to be discussed in my next blog post!).

Image: The Pioneer at Fort Garry, 1861 (Note the cut-outs for the medallions above the elevators!).

Recently my friends over at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives (HBCA) showed me an amazing piece of HBC history, the first post journal for York Factory. They had selected it for their latest Spotlight feature on their website as the journal was celebrating its 300th anniversary on September 11. You can check out this interesting feature here to learn more about James Knight’s first year at York Factory, and be sure to check out their Spotlight archive to read up on previous features from the HBCA.

I was pretty excited to head into their vault when they told me about the journal, I couldn’t believe I’d get to see a document that was written 300 years ago. The journal did not disappoint, not only is it filled with James Knight’s observations and detailed accounts of daily life at York Factory, but it is also absolutely beautiful to look at.

There are a number of good sites to visit if you’re interested in learning more about the HBC but one of my favourite go-to sites is produced by some good colleagues of mine at HBC Heritage Services. You can check it out here.

This website has a ton of information so I encourage you to take some time and explore it if you haven’t already. Teachers and students should head to the Learning Centre where they will find numerous features specifically created to complement curriculum across the country. The rest of the site, which is easy to navigate, is full of informative articles about HBC history. Much of the content is supplied by Joan Murray, the Corporate Historian for HBC Heritage Services, and she’s based out of the HBC’s head office in Toronto. Joan knows a lot about the company’s history and material culture, and she’s always willing to help out a newbie like me.*

I was pretty excited when Joan and her team approached me for some assistance with their website. They wanted to showcase some of the amazing artifacts from the HBC Museum Collection in the Artifact Gallery of their Learning Centre. I was able to provide them with some nice photos and captions and they took it from there, here’s a teaser but to see the full gallery click here.

I’ve been really fortunate to work with great people like Joan during my first year as a Curator, and I look forward to future collaborations with her and others. In fact, my next two blog posts will be about collaborations with some other fantastic institutions. Stay tuned!

* I can still play the “new” card until I hit my official one-year anniversary with TMM (September 3rd!).

Even though I’ve been in the job for 9 months there are still parts of the collection that I’m not as comfortable with, largely because I’ve never worked in that geographic region. That’s why I was very excited to receive a request from Jennifer Kramer, Pacific Northwest Curator at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) in Vancouver to come and look at any Northwest Coast artefacts during her visit to Winnipeg. What a perfect opportunity to learn about a part of the collection that I know very little about!

Jennifer has been working closely with the Nuxalk (pronounced new-haulk) community, and quite closely with Clyde Tallio, a Nuxalk culture historian and visiting scholar at UBC. It turns out there is a pretty substantial Nuxalk collection within the HBC collection, and Jennifer was able to tell me more about it while documenting the items, and Clyde provided us with the Nuxalk names and additional information.

One of these items is currently on display in the HBC Gallery, it is listed as a ‘rain hat’ from Bella Coola. Unfortunately the cases in this gallery are difficult to open, so we relied on the database information and anything we could find in the donor file.

Jennifer informed me that this ceremonial hat, likely made from woven spruce root or cedar, would have been worn by someone of great importance. Each of the ball-like additions on the top represent individual potlatch ceremonies, thus this hat was part of four potlatch ceremonies.

The collector of the hat, Clifford Kopas, had sent photos to the Hudson’s Bay Company from Bella Coola and some of these were printed in the June 1948 edition of The Beaver.

Clifford Wilson, Curator of the HBC Historical Exhibition, wrote to Cliff Kopas to ask about some of the items one of the women was wearing in the photo, in particular “an excellent spruce root hat, which I suspect should be worn by a man rather than a woman” (excerpt from his letter, found in our donor files from the HBC Archives). He went on “I wonder if she still has these items, and whether she would be willing to part with them…our Pacific Coast Indian material is not as good as it should be and we ought to get hold of items like this when they are available”.

One month later the hat arrives and is catalogued as part of the HBC collection.

Jennifer and I found the June 1948 edition of The Beaver and I scanned the photo for her to take back and show Clyde. He was able to tell us the names of both women in the photo: Annie Johnson on the left, and Helen (née Houstie) Schooner. Helen was a very high ranking Heiltsuk woman who married Samson Schooner and Clyde believes the hat did in fact belong to her (rather than Clifford Wilson’s suggestion that it was a male chief’s hat) since her marriage had been validated and potlatched four times (and remember that this hat has four rings!).

So not only did I make some great connections with Northwest Coast scholars, but through this we were able to connect an artifact within the HBC collection to an actual person!