"My desire was to paint a series of word pictures of the North as I
knew it, of the fur trade of an earlier day, and of the men and
women who walked the stage at that particular time." -Harold Kemp
First published in 1956, "Northern Trader" is a historically
valuable, intimately personal and vividly expressed memoir of the
last days of the fur trade. A gifted writer, Harold Kemp recounts
the routine and rhythms of that long-lost way of life; a life that
had been "following the same placid course that it had been
following for the past two hundred years"; a life in which "bark
canoes were still built, muzzle-loaders still used," and where the
north was "a vast region of infinite allure in which a young man
could test his characters, make his name, and earn a living far
distant from the mundane familiarities of town or city." Kemp tells
how, as a teenager, he was fascinated by a map of northern
Saskatchewan with "too many blank, unexplored areas on it, too many
lakes half-drawn, too many rivers that terminate only in dotted
lines."
Kemp's palpable, often gripping prose recounts life on the trail in
all seasons: paddling freight canoes, being under sail in a York
boat, packing one's own weight on portages, running on snowshoes to
break trail for dogs pulling loaded toboggans, and making camp at
the end of an exhausting day.
Equally impressive, historically, are his depictions of the Cree
among whom he lived, whose language he spoke, whose skills he
admired, and whose customs he respected.
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