David Thompson's Travels is one of the finest early expressions of the Canadian experience. The work is not only the account of a remarkable life in the fur trade but an extended meditation on the land and Native peoples of western North America. The tale spans the years 1784 to 1807 and extends from the Great Lakes to the Rockies, from Athabasca to Missouri. A distinguished literary work, the Travels alternates between the expository prose of the scientist and the vivid language of the storyteller, animated throughout by a restless spirit of inquiry and sense of wonder. In the first volume of an ambitious three-volume project that will finally bring all of Thompson's writings together, editor William Moreau presents the Travels narrative as it existed in 1850, when the author was forced to abandon his work. Accompanying Moreau's transcription is an introductory essay and a textual introduction, extensive critical annotations, historical and modern maps, and a biographical appendix. The definitive collection of Thompson's works, The Writings of David Thompson will bring one of North American's most important early travellers and surveyors and his world to a whole new generation of readers.

David Thompson is a general building contractor who has lived in the Yukon Territory since 1962. His love for the land and its people has inspired him to write short stories describing life in the Yukon. He has twice won Dawson City’s “Authors on Eighth” writing contest for short fiction and has had stories published in local newspapers. David lives in Whitehorse with his wife Wendy, a Montessori teacher, two children Adam and Shawna, son-in-law Gary and two wonderful grandsons, Cameron and Jordon.

David Thompson's profile page

William E. Moreau is a teacher with the Toronto District School Board and a sessional lecturer with the University of Toronto at Scarborough.

William E. Moreau's profile page

"Thompson's descriptions of his experiences transports the reader to the era of Euro American contact with Indigenous people in the pre-colonial West like no other - his observations are amongst the clearest and most perceptive written during the period.

"The Travels is one of the pillars of Canadian writing, and as such, a primary source for scholars and researchers. Thompson is essential to the concept of the West; in some (European) ways, he created it. He predicted the demise of the bison, the decimat

"Moreau has tackled the thorny text of David Thompson's Travels with a lucid new transcription that sweeps readers across the breadth of North America. Along the way Thompson's disparate parts assemble themselves into a full-blown character, possessed of

"Moreau integrates new materials and ensures that previously excluded material is now accessible. Scholars have been waiting some time for a complete Thompson edition, and this will be used and admired by historians and anthropologists throughout the Unit

"In a very well-written introduction, editor Moreau points out that Thompson is best understood if the reader views him in the multiple roles of storyteller, interpreter of events, scientist, philosopher, and mediator. Thompson's own writings give ample evidence of this astute observation." CHOICE

"Re-publication of Thompson's Travels reminds us of what constitutes an historical records, and reestablishes the need to peruse this kind of early contact accounting when undertaking historical inquiry... both for the student and for the general reader,