biography

Q&A with David Elliott, author of Adventures in the West, Part 1

Tell us about your book.

It is a biographical account of Henry Ross Halpin who joined the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1872 at the age of seventeen. He worked in the fur trade throughout western Canada where he had a great fascination with and empathy for Canada’s native peoples. In 1885 he was taken prisoner by rebel Cree during the Riel Rebellion, but became a secretary to his friend the deposed chief Big Bear who had protected him. Later he worked for sixteen years as a government Indian Agent in Saskatchewan. By 1901, Halpin appears to have become disillusioned when the government broke of its treaty obligations and reversed much of the hard work he had done for the people under his care. He quit that career and returned to the Hudson’s Bay Company. This book is based on his own lively and descriptive memoirs, augmented by the records of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the trial transcripts of the Riel Rebellion, correspondence and reports of the Department of Indian affairs, and family letters.

How did you come up with the idea for this work?

I discovered Henry Halpin while doing my own family history. I learned that he had married my father’s aunt. I had taught western Canadian history and the fur trade for many years at university and knew of Halpin’s role in the Riel Rebellion, but not his connection to my family. When I read his memoirs I realized that they were extremely valuable as a historical resource and needed to be published.

How did you come up with the title?

Halpin had gone out west looking for adventure and indeed found it. The title reflects the experiences he had.

Tell us a little about the overarching theme of your work, and why you felt compelled to explore it.

The book explores the little understood work activities and social life of lower echelon employees of the HBC and the oft-misunderstood and despised work of Indian agents in Canada. Halpin’s life sheds light on these two areas of our past history. I believe this study is possibly the first to examine the private life of an Indian agent.
How did you research your book?

Many hours were spent in the National Archives and Library in Ottawa reading microfilms of the HBC journals and correspondence, Indian Affairs reports and correspondence, and at the University of Western Ontario going through the Canadian Sessional Papers. Newspaper collections held by Paper of Record and Ancestry.com were searched for articles about Halpin. Much of the newspaper research was done by my late cousin Jack Elliott, who had originally found Halpin’s manuscripts, but Jack died before he could see the final product. The vast photographic collection of the Glenbow-Alberta Institute in Calgary also proved to be a valuable source for the visual history of the period.

What was the hardest part of writing your book?

I would have liked to have had “the rest of his story.” His manuscripts covered only a brief period of his life; we could not find the remaining portions of his larger manuscript, so we had to go to other primary sources to fill out his life.

© 2009 Defining Canada.