An important part of the history of Saskatchewan and how it can connect to a family was the topic of discussion at the Prince Albert Historical Museum on Sunday.
Barb Gustafson was on hand as the Coffee and Conversation guest to discuss her family’s deep connection to the Hudson’s Bay Company.
The talk was entitled “Mapping the Hudson’s Bay Company into our Family Tree.”
She said the idea came about when the company went into liquidation earlier this year.
“In May, as the Hudson Bay Company was shutting down and there was lots of news about it going into liquidation, the focus was always on the business side,” Gustafson said. “I started thinking about it and I thought, well, there’s a whole personal side of the Hudson Bay Company’s influence on Canada as well.”
Gustafson, a former editor of the Daily Herald, then began writing about the connection,
“That’s part of my family’s history, so I wrote a personal essay that was published in the Globe and Mail,” she said. “You can still find it there.”
The Museum then invited Gustafson to expand on her essay and talk about the connections between the HBC and her family. The family connection goes back to her seventh Great Grandfather.
“With the Hudson’s Bay Company, it goes all the way back to the 1700s,” she said. “Philip Turner was the first person hired as a surveyor by the Hudson Bay Company. He came to Canada, and he had an Indigenous wife in the fashion of the country of the time and they had at least one child. Then that child had many children and their children had many children. At any rate, my aunt, Pearl Weston, did a tremendous job of tracing it all back in the 1990s, long before Google. I give her great credit for that.”
Weston’s research used the company archives as a basis.
“This is talking a bit about that for others who want to, who have a connection to the Hudson Bay Company, you might want to delve into that,” Gustafson said. “A lot of it is online now, so it’s much easier.”
As the fur trade ended, Gustafson’s family moved to farming, but her ancestors continued to work for the HBC in other roles.
She said working off the research conducted by others was fascinating.
“It was very interesting,” she said. “I mean, it wasn’t me doing the research. The research had been done by my aunt and by others. (I wanted) to go back and reread it and to try to add a bit to it.
“It was very interesting to dig into it further. Hopefully people will enjoy it and maybe it’ll spur them to look into that,” she added.
The Hudson’s Bay Company is also part of Metis heritage in Saskatchewan, she said.
“The other side of it is the Metis connection, because he was married to an Indigenous woman, and then there were other generations where that occurred as well. So the Metis heritage that I have comes from that side,” Gustafson said.
“So for many people with a connection to the Hudson Bay Company, there’s also that connection to Indigenous heritage.”
Phillip Turner was also married to someone else, which she said was also indicative of the times.
“He also married a woman in England, in the church. Which was also typical for the times,” Gustafson said. “I find that people have a lot of misconceptions about who is Metis and that sort of thing. I talk about that a little bit and about how you can find records to show that as well.”
Following the Coffee and Conversation there was a question and answer session.
The next Coffee and Conversation is on Nov. 19 at 2 p.m. with Fred Payton, who has yet to choose his topic but has narrowed it down to two possibilities.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
