• Age: 15
• Grade: 10

The first real look at the Canadian West

 

Harmon's Journal—the first published English-language journal written in B.C.-is a lively, engaging story that, unlike other early journals, captures the rough-and-tumble life of a fur trader and explorer in the western Canada of 200 years ago. Harmon's descriptions of the cultures and customs of the people he met provide important observations of various First Nations almost before they were touched by European culture. He also details activities of the traders and explorers with whom he exchanged letters—such notable personalities as David Thompson, Simon Fraser and John Stuart. Harmon writes with honesty and often raw emotion in his accounts of his travels and adventures, and his reflections are often profound. Harmon's Journal is the authentic 1957 edition of the journal edited by esteemed historian William Kaye Lamb.

Daniel Williams Harmon left his home in Bennington, Vermont, in 1800, when he was 21 years old. He was engaged by the North West Company in Montreal to proceed to "Indian Country," where he spent the next 19 years. For nine of these years, he was a seasoned trader in north-central British Columbia at the Stuart Lake Post (now Fort St. James).

Daniel Williams Harmon's profile page

Harmon’s Journal 1810–1819

This journal is a major source of information, by a significant participant, on the fur trade and the North West Company. Harmon wrote of his life as a veteran trader and explorer for the Company and as a lonely man, married man and then father. Relationships with First Nations peoples, other personnel in the forts and settlements and with his wife, Elizabeth Duval—the daughter of a French Canadian father and a Cree mother—are engagingly described. From at least 1813 many of the entries reflect Harmon’s conversion in that year to the Christian faith.

This work was republished in 2006 in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the founding, by Simon Fraser, of Stuart Lake Post (Fort St. James).

Caution: many references to First Nations as “Indians” and some as “savages”; also references to incest, wife/women beating and cannibalism