George Nelson (1786-1859) was a clerk for the North West Company whose unusually detailed and personal writings provide a compelling portrait of the people engaged in the golden age of the Canadian fur trade. Friends, Foes, and Furs is a critical edition of Nelson's daily journals, supplemented with exciting anecdotes from his "Reminiscences," which were written after his retirement to Lower Canada. An introduction and annotations by Harry Duckworth place Nelson's material securely within the established body of fur trade history. This series of journals gives readers a first-person account of Nelson's life and career, from his arrival at the age of eighteen in Lake Winnipeg, where he was stationed as an apprentice clerk from 1804 to 1813, to his second service from 1818 to 1819 and an 1822 canoe journey through the region. A keen and respectful observer, Nelson recorded in his daily journals not only the minutiae of his work, but also details about the lives of voyageurs, the Ojibwe and Swampy Cree communities, and others involved in the fur trade. His insights uncover an extraordinary view of the Lake Winnipeg region in the period just prior to European settlement. Making the full extent of George Nelson's journals available for the first time, Friends, Foes, and Furs is an intriguing account of one man's adventures in the fur trade in prairie Canada.

Harry W. Duckworth is a retired professor of chemistry at the University of Manitoba and editor of The English River Book: A North West Company Journal and Account Book of 1786.

Harry W. Duckworth's profile page

"Duckworth knows his subject well. His Introduction provides an engaging overview of Nelson's career, the nature of his writings, as well as comments on Nelson as a journalist, his management of the Lake Winnipeg district for the North West Company, along with his dealings with the bourgeois, voyageurs, and Indigenous traders of the region. Duckworth brings considerable experience to the history of the NWC with his previous work editing company journals and his knowledge of the fascinating variety of individuals who made up the trade associated with the Ojibwa and Swampy Cree communities around the Lake. His biographical notes are extensive, as are his separate appendices that provide backgrounds on Indigenous peoples, voyageurs, as well as the clerks and partners that populate Nelson's writings." Prairie History

"Friends, Foes, and Furs reflects a lifetime of knowledge and scholarship on the part of the editor, Harry Duckworth. It is an outstanding example of its genre." Frits Pannekoek, Athabasca University