Janice Nickerson - Saturday, March 26
9:30 am to 12:30 pm
Talk begins at 10:00 am

Janice Nickerson, is focused on the Upper Canada period - 1791 to 1841 - as it is the toughest to research (for beginners and professionals alike!).

Topic: My Ancestors in the Hudson’s Bay Company Fur Trade

Before there was a country called Canada, First Nations people were trading furs, food and labour with men from England and Scotland who came to the “New World” as employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company. One of the things the “Company men” did best was to keep records. The archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company at the Provincial Archives of Manitoba are vast and rich with information. And much of their collection is now accessible online, if you know where to look and are willing to invest the time. And that’s not all! From published records to private collections around the country, fur trade research is blessed with an abundance of sources. In this lecture I will introduce you to my ancestors — English mariners and fur traders, First Nations women, and their ‘country-born’ children — and the records I used to discover their stories.