Trader King is the graphic and powerfully moving story of one of the most fearless and colourful traders of the Canadian North - William Cornwallis King - as told to Mary Weeks in the 1930's. Working for the Hudson's Bay Company from 1862 to 1903, King's story is an exciting first-hand account of the early days of the fur trade in Canada.

An excellent storyteller with a sharp memory and an eye for detail, King takes us on his travels with the voyageurs, trading missions with Indian tribes, and walks across the Barren Lands, facing forest fires and starvation and yet continuing to loyally represent the interests of the famous Hudson's Bay Company.

Born in Tracadie, Nova Scotia, in 1884, Mary Loretta Weekes (nee Gerin) trained as a nurse at Boston City Hospital in 1910. She served briefly at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital before moving to Regina with her husband in 1914. Following the birth of the first of three sons, she turned her hand to writing short stories. Her interview with Norbert Welsh in 1931 led to the book The Last Buffalo Hunter (1939), and her interview with William Cornwallis King in 1936 culminated in Trader King. Weekes's other books include Round Council Fires, Painted Arrows, and Great Chiefs and Mighty Hunters. Mary Weekes died in 1980.

Mary Weekes' profile page