Читать книгу Arctic Trader--the account of twenty years with the Hudson's Bay Company - Philip Henry Godsell - Страница 4

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The period covered by Philip Godsell’s narrative, though short in the life of a great company (which celebrated its 250th anniversary some fifteen years ago), is perhaps the most eventful in the history of Canada’s north. When young Godsell joined “the service” as an apprentice clerk in the early part of this century, life at many of the northern trading posts was little changed from that throughout the hundred years previous. Transportation and communication in summer were by York boat and the birch-bark canoe, and in winter by the carriole and the dog sled. Mails were infrequent, and a Post manager was forced by his isolation to depend upon his own initiative and resourcefulness to meet the varying conditions of a primitive life. The life of the native was simple, being governed almost entirely by the necessity of securing the bare means of existence. Comforts, much less luxuries, were unknown, and life, even for the traders, was primitive.

The story is brought up to the present day, and when it closes, a tremendous gap has been bridged, marking an evolution in the history of northern Canada such as would have been inconceivable to the “wintering partners” of the old “Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson’s Bay” of even a generation or two ago.

Two factors are almost solely responsible for this change, the aeroplane, and the radio, by which both time and distance no longer isolate the occupant of the lonely outposts, even on the shores of the Arctic. The marvel of this change can only be appreciated to the full by those who, twenty-five or thirty years ago, were compelled or elected to live on the fringe of the Arctic, and who now, on a Saturday night, listen to the messages sent from within the vale of civilization, to friends or relatives in all parts of the north, through the medium of the Canadian Broadcasting Commission. To such, the reading of Philip Godsell’s story will bring a striking realization of Time’s march of progress. To others, it will be a record of northern Canadian life engagingly told by one who has learned of it by living it; a record that needs to be preserved for future generations.

CHARLES CAMSELL, b.a., ll.d.

Deputy Minister of Mines and President

Canadian Geographical Society

Ottawa, April 12th, 1934