George Cartwright's The Labrador Companion

Cartwright, George; Stopp, Marianne (ed)

ISBN 10: 0773548068 / ISBN 13: 9780773548060

Published by Mcgill-Queens University Press, Montreal, QC & Kingston, ON, Canada, 2016

About this Item

xxxix, 350pp w appendix, bibliography and index. Illustrated wrapper is clean and without wear. Binding square and tight, not creased. Octavo.

Seller Inventory # 040245

Bibliographic Details

• Title: George Cartwright's The Labrador Companion
• Publisher: Mcgill-Queens University Press, Montreal, QC & Kingston, ON, Canada
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773548068
• ISBN 13: 9780773548060
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Canadian History

About this title

Synopsis

New manuscripts directly related to Canada’s history rarely come to light. The Labrador Companion, written in 1810 by Captain George Cartwright (1739-1819), and discovered in 2013, is a fascinating and unusual find because of its level of detail, its setting in a hardly studied part of Britain’s fur-trade empire, and because it is a personal account rather than a trade outfit ledger or government document.

This annotated edition transcribes The Labrador Companion in full. Cartwright documented the everyday work of Labrador’s particular kind of fur-trade life based on his experiences operating a series of merchant stations in southern Labrador between 1770 and 1786. Although his focus is firmly on instruction in the manifold ways of capturing animals, he also provides rare glimpses of Innu and Inuit life as well as of housekeeping and gardening. The Labrador Companion includes a lengthy description of Labrador’s fauna - of land, sea, and air - that counts among Canada’s earliest natural history writing based on first-hand observation.

A revealing account of fur-trade-era technology, methods, and materials, conveyed through one man’s acquired knowledge and skills, The Labrador Companion gives a close-to-the-ground picture of the resource industries that were at the heart of British, and French, colonial presence in the Canadian northeast.

About the Author

Marianne P. Stopp is an archaeologist who has researched the history and prehistory of Labrador for over twenty-five years.