Tag Archives: fur trade

How to Celebrate New Year’s Day Like a Fur Trader

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Jessica Di Laurenzio It is impossible to study early Canadian history without understanding the fur trade, and impossible to study the fur trade without coming across the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Some of the most useful and interesting records are the journals that kept daily accounts of post activities. Among the entries that jotted down the weather, visitors… Read more »

Religion and Auteurism in The Revenant

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What are the problems and possibilities of Hollywood history? ActiveHistory is pleased to feature a four-essay forum on The Revenant, a 2015 Hollywood historical epic set against the backdrop of the early 1800s North American fur trade. As a primer, we recommend reading Stacy Nation-Knapper’s excellent review from earlier this year. Benjamin Bryce and Anna Casas Aguilar The Revenant is loosely… Read more »

The True Revenants of a Buried Past

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What are the problems and possibilities of Hollywood history? ActiveHistory is pleased to feature a four-essay forum on The Revenant, a 2015 Hollywood historical epic set against the backdrop of the early 1800s North American fur trade. As a primer, we recommend reading Stacy Nation-Knapper’s excellent review from earlier this year. Michel Bouchard The Revenant is the latest of ghostly resurrections… Read more »

Hugh Glass: The Evolution of a Legend

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What are the problems and possibilities of Hollywood history? ActiveHistory is pleased to feature a four-essay forum on The Revenant, a 2015 Hollywood historical epic set against the backdrop of the early 1800s North American fur trade. As a primer, we recommend reading Stacy Nation-Knapper’s excellent review from earlier this year. Claire Kaufman The fur trader and mountain man Hugh Glass… Read more »

“Inspired by True Events”: The Fur Trade, The Revenant, and Humanity

What are the problems and possibilities of Hollywood history? ActiveHistory is pleased to feature a four-essay forum on The Revenant, a 2015 Hollywood historical epic set against the backdrop of the early 1800s North American fur trade. As a primer, we recommend reading Stacy Nation-Knapper’s excellent review from earlier this year. Ted Binnema The Revenant’s trailer indicates that the movie is… Read more »

Film Friday: The Revenant is Beautiful, Disappointing Art

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Stacy Nation-Knapper The Revenant is not history. Yes, as the film trailers, posters, and advertisements boast, the film was “inspired by true events” and it represents an amalgam of multiple historic fur trade events during the years 1820-24, and fantasy. Most of the non-Indigenous characters in the film existed. Other writers, including Clay Landry for the Museum of the Mountain… Read more »

“And bold and adventurous amazons they were”: Colonial encounters with LGBT Indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest fur-trade

By Eric Wright An earlier version of post originally appeared on the author’s blog Actually History.  In 1814, an Irish fur-trader in the employ of the Northwest Company by the name of Ross Cox was conducting business with Indigenous people near present day Spokane, Washington when he encountered, in his eyes, a remarkable individual.  In his journal under the titillating heading… Read more »

An Historic Voyageur in Modern Times

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By Jay Bailey Early in my career as a French teacher in Manitoba, I took students to the Festival du Voyageur in St. Boniface, Winnipeg. There I was fascinated by the life and times, the strength, stamina and joie-de-vivre of the voyageurs. In addition, I was intrigued by the fact that the fur trade was dependent on the vagaries of… Read more »