A Tough Life: Compelling Accounts of a Family in the Fur Trade

Edited by Doug Munro

The editor is the great-grandson of Chief Trader Willie Traill and has published this book of his family letters.

Willie served with the Hudson's Bay Company from 1864 to 1893.He was based at 11 posts from Fort Garry to Fort St James. The letters are a splendid overview of fur trade life in the West; the good times and bad. The trials and tribulations faced by Willie, his wife Harriet and their 12 children included famine, scarlet fever, small pox and whooping cough epidemics, ferocious winters, drought and flood and plagues of grasshoppers. Notwithstanding many hardships Willie and his family's cup was invariably "half full."

William Edward Traill, better known as Willie, came by his literary talent naturally. In an excerpt from one of Willie's early letters to his mother, dated July 22, 1865, he describes his first buffalo hunt. These letters were Willie's life line from the Canadian West to his family in eastern Ontario. They are a unique collection, and one you should enjoy.

“I then picked out a large bull and fired at him and think wounded him. He separated from the rest. I followed ….when I got close jumped off [my horse] and got good aim and I am sure struck him. He slackened his pace….We then caught sight of a bull standing and putting up his tail a sure sign that he is angry….I fired and struck him in the shoulder and neck….This would prove a mortal wound but he would run far so we chased him again. Thomas now fired but missed. I fired again and struck him about the heart…Thomas fired again and struck him near the kidneys and I was coming up close behind him when up went his tail. I hauled my horse to one side when he made a desperate charge at me but I was too smart for him I fired again and struck him in the neck. He stood looking defiance at us and then lay down….dead…only then did I realize what a monster he was – larger than 3 oxen and covered on the head and shoulders with hair that hid his eyes and horns and forelegs and a long beard under his chin…. I had intended making a powder horn of the first bull I killed but all old bulls have horns so much worn by sharpening them on stones that those of all [old] bulls are useless for such purposes….The monster ran fully 5 miles in which he got several shots. Unless struck in the heart or backbone they cannot be knocked down at the first shot and if not killed in 8 shots cannot be killed at all so say the Hunters.”

Maj K. Doug Munro is a member of RUSI VI and a former director. If you have any questions about "Willie Traill," please call Doug at 250-370-5494 or email: lforlanky@gmail.com or, if you need more information about obtaining the book locally. Published by University of Alberta Press.

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