Peter C. NewmanReseñas

An excellent history of the Hudson's Bay Company. Enjoyable reading, and I recommend also that one should read Fatal Passage by Ken McGoogan shortly before or after reading this book.

A competent biography of a man whose life I remember. I didn't like "Dief the Chief" then, and this book, and the subsequent events have not improved him in my opinion. But, a necessary part of a Canadian's education.

Would love to give this one a more accurate 3 1/2 stars. I could not muster a 4 for it. A nice tight little history of the Liberal Party of Canada and how they lost their way, leading to the debacle of the last federal election. Completely devoid of any humour, really just a dry political recanting of a party whose best days are seemingly behind them.
I wish there were a Canadian version of Hunter Thompson to tell this tale.

A bit dated, but interesting snapshot of Canada in the 1990s

great pictures, but writing over the top about the wonderfulness of Canada.

dief was pm when I was a teenager so this really took me back.

interesting but peculiar.

i have never heard of most of these guys so that was interesting.

This book presents both a biography of the Loyalist Jarvis family, and a history of the time in North America. Unfortunately, it falls short on both accounts.

There is a lot of general history of the time, little of it specific to the Loyalist experience -- with the notable exception of how Loyalists were discriminated against in the U.S. colonies. I found many generalizations, a Toronto-centric view that goes too far in attributing to Loyalists the shaping of our country -- largely ignoring the contributions of Aboriginal Peoples and other immigrants.

The narrative of the Jarvis family wasn't strong enough to carry the story forward.

I'm sure you can find a better book on the Loyalists.

Canada oligarchs; narcotics; Mafia; British Empire; Kennedy assassination

Fascinating. Mr. Newman has done an amazing amount of research and has written a totally engaging history of the Hudson's Bay Company....which, in many ways, is also a history of Canada. There is so much detail here, but it is never boring. There are also lots of interesting facts, such as how fire water got its name; a U.S. bill to annex Canada that was never implemented; how the approaches of the HBC and the Northwest Company differed....

I especially loved the epilogue. These last six pages were so moving that I read them to my husband -- they speak directly to the Canadian soul.½

The Story of the Hudson Bay Company.

This was a part of history unfamiliar to me - Canadian voyagers and the fur trade.

I liked the statement:

No voyageur ever reported meeting a small bear, a tame moose or a wolf that wasn't snarling with blood lust.

I learned about interesting people:

George Simpson - he may have been the model of the hero of Jules Verne's around the world in eighty days.

John Rowan - on one occasion when surrounded by 200 Blackfoot on the war path he marched up to the chef and roared "Stop you villain!" then turned his back and returned to his meal. Recognizing his opponent the chef not only called of the raiding party but was so abject in his apology that according to Colin Fraser many Indians "actually cried in vexation.

A survey of Canada's place in the defence of North America. We can't afford a very independent stance as regards the USA, and we can't expect them to sacrifice their interests to serving ours. A depressing book.

My reactions to reading this in 1994.

Didn’t find this book as interesting as the first volume in the series.

It mainly covers the career of the penurious, womanizing, profit-obsessed, hard driving career of George Simpson, Governor of HBC for almost forty years (1821-1860). Simpson, says Newman, was ideally suited for the HBC at that time and made it profitable. In his time, the HBC holdings went from Hudson Bay to trading posts on Hawaii. He was hard working; his only pleasure seems to have been the lightening-fast canoe trips, undertaken to catch is subordinates off guards, he took throughout his commercial empire. The canoes were propelled by special squads of Indian rowers. He concerned himself with many petty details and kept a “Character Book” where he recorded his impressions (good and bad) of his underlings.

Other personalities of note in the book are intrepid HBC explorers Simon Fraser and Alexander Mackenzie who explored the rivers bearing their names, John McLaughlin – the “Father of the Oregon” – who was treated badly by his HBC superiors and the American settlers he helped and who bitterly remarked at the end of his life that it would have been better if he would have been shot 40 years early. (Newman talks about HBC fears – and until 1870, as this book makes clear, HBC controlled much of Canada – that the American’s would encroach on their “claims”.) Lord Selkirk’s life not only had historical interest for his attempt to found a quasi-utopia community of displaced Scottish crofters and for the fact that John Paul Jones tried to take him hostage during the Revolutionary War (Jones believed himself to be the unacknowledged bastard of Selkirk), but he also had a personal interest in the land grant given Selkirk by the HBC since it covers an area straddling the US (North Dakota and Minnesota)-Canada border. Swiss settlers recruited by Selkirk (with the promise of growing citrus fruit in Canada) moved to Ft. Snelling, Minnesota.

Selkirk’s project got caught up with the voyageurs (Newman has a nice chapter on their life, culture, and ethics) dispute with the HBC. It was a fierce commercial rivalry. The Nor’westers were more innovative, aggressive, and – through a complex net of intermarriage with Indians aka “country wives” – better positioned socially (though they tended to cheat the Indians more) to develop the fur trade. However, the HBC had two great advantages: patience and its very important staging area in Hudson Bay which enabled it to penetrate far into Canada by nautical transportation as opposed to the NWC’s (North Western Company) vast canoe trips via river (Newman points out that Canada is amazingly navigable by canoe.) However, the HBC eventually forced the NWC into a merger but not before a nasty shooting war between the two companies (which Selkirk got caught up in when the NWC allies, the Metís, killed some settlers).

The Metís where a true half-breed culture not only genetically (the products of matings between trappers and country wives) but culturally with the Creóle French language, settled ways and European tools as well as seasonal buffalo hunt. Newman also talks about, as in the first volume, the significance of country marriages. Some men abandoned their country wives when they gave up trapping. Others, even though they married Indians for sexual comfort and business connections, came to love their wives and brought them to their American or Canadian homes.

Newman also addressed the bad effects of the liquor-fur trade plied aggressively by both NWC and HBC. He briefly covers the dispute over whether Indians have a weakness for alcohol, either cultural (a tradition of drug influence negating personal responsibility and being a way to contact the spirit world) or genetic (or, indeed, if Caucasians have a peculiar -- relative to other races -- tolerance for alcohol) or not. Newman also brings up the pain and social havoc suffered by both white and Indian women when it no longer was acceptable to have – or acknowledge a former – country wife. (Frances Simpson, George Simpson’s wife, was pained to learn of his Indian lovers.) This book also shows the political and commercial grip the HBC had on much of Canada and why, in some quarters, it is still hated today.

My reactions to reading this book in 1994.

A fascinating book about the Hudson Bay Company’s early days and an intriguing account of the beginnings of a commercial empire in the desolate Arctic.

I liked several things in this book.

I found the descriptions of the land (swampy and desolate around Hudson’s Bay) and beaver’s habits interesting and also the French-English naval battles fought in the area as part of the French-English military and political conflicts in North America.

The details of the Hudson Bay Company’s men’s lives were interesting: their huge feasts and bouts of drinking (not a lot to do there) and sexual promiscuity with the Indian women. (Taking a “country wife” was not only a good way to get sex but helped the Bay men learn the language and develop trade relations.). I also found it amusing that many men from Scotland’s Orkney islands had long careers in the Bay. The climate wasn’t that much worse than the Orkneys; they could save up – for them – a relatively large sum of money since their needs were met. Indeed, they ate better than at home, and their Bay housing, while primitive (many accounts of ice being chipped from the inside walls of Bay forts), wasn’t any worse than where they came from.

But best of all, I liked the tales of Bay men and legendary Arctic explorers Samuel Hearne and John Rae. Hearne kept a fascinating journal detailing natural history observations, disgusting Indian foods (Hearne only drew the line at eating lice and warble flies), strange Indian practices (like Indian blowing into each others anuses as a cure for constipation), Chipewyan contempt for their women, and the brutal – almost eternal – war between Inuit and Chipewyan. Hearne had very bad luck on his first trips and was barely saved from death by Chipewyan chief Matonabbee who initiated him into the techniques of Arctic survival to the point where Hearne eventually traveled with a minimum of supplies. His walks through the Arctic and survey of the coast of the Arctic Sea put an end to the dream (though this wasn’t recognized at the time) of a Northwest Passage. The even more incredible surgeon John Rae pushed Hearne’s technique of going native even further. (He was inspired by Hearne’s account). He mapped more than 1,700 of the Arctic Sea’s coast. He traveled light, usually little more than a rifle (he was an excellent shot.), ammo, clothes, and snowshoes. He is the first white man to build igloos. Sometimes he’d carry a book of Shakespeare’s plays and always a journal and surveying tools. He, like Hearne, recorded natural history observations, defended the Eskimo culture, and is best known for, in 1854, providing proof with artifacts of the fate of the famous 1821 Franklin expedition and putting forth the unpopular notion that these noble examples of heroic British exploration resorted to cannibalism in the end. (An idea later proved by forensic anthropologists on bodies from the Franklin expedition.). The Royal Geographic Society never forgave him for sullying the name of Franklin while succeeding by violating the “rules” of popular exploration by going native.

Newman also makes an interesting point about the differences in American and HBC relations with their Indian populations. The HBC sought to co-opt the Indians via trade rather than conquer them. By trading guns, iron hatchets, and copper kettles, they propelled the Indians from the Stone Age to the modern age with no intermediate steps, no development of the accompanying and necessary scientific and technical skills. The Indians became dependent for their survival on guns and hatchets supplied by whites. They became addicted to the white’s tobacco (Newman doesn’t answer the question as to what exactly the Indians smoked in their pipe ceremonies they seemed to have had before white arrival) and alcohol. (The Indians preferred English tobacco grown in Brazil but French cognac since the English usually only had gin colored with iodine.) Canadian history is not, like American, marked by Indian Wars. However, Canadian Indians activists don’t see that as a good thing. They argue that by fighting Indians, making treaties (whether kept or not) with them, and eventually setting up the reservation system, the American government came to recognize the Indians as a distinct nation accorded subsequent rights and recognized as a separate culture whereas Canadian Indians became dependent on a patronizing Canadian government. (I would argue that Indian tribes in America are not truly nations a are quite dependent on the U.S. government.)

Peter C. Newman is a well known Canadian author. I've read several of his books over the years. This is truly one of his best.

Mr. Newman writes that he started this project as a biography of Michael Ignatieff, then-leader of the Liberal Party. And, there are excerpts of interviews throughout the book. But, as he studied the leader, he also saw a party that had lost its place in the hearts and minds of Canadians. Successive leaders were partly responsible for the declining fortunes of the party, and partly a reflection of ta party that had lost its way.

Mr. Newman has written this book in an especially engaging, almost conversational, style. He presents some very astute observations and analysis in a way that made this literally a page-turner for me.

A must read, I would say, for anyone interested in Canada, or in the future of the politics of the centre.

A readable book on the early history of Canada.

Peter C. Newman has changed my opinion of Mulroney--slightly.

With the exception of his dubious cash deals, that are neglected here, the book actually humanizes and rehabilitates the "Boy from Baie-Comeau." Make no mistake, he was naive and inexperienced in the personal and public concessions he made.

I have no idea why Mulroney hates this book, other than a flaring up of his two hatreds of journalists and of having his trust betrayed.

Izzy Asper should be a Canadian hero. He put together a multi-media corporation (including Canada's third national television network), gave generously to the community, and raised three fine children who are carrying on his legacy. And, he did it all from his humble beginnings in small-town Manitoba.

Peter Newman has written an excellent biography of Mr. Asper. The book chronicles Izzy's life, his business exploits, his personal love of jazz music, martiinis and Craven A's and his devotion to his home town of Winnipeg and his adopted home land of Israel.

Mr. Newman has obviously done a lot of research and makes Izzy come to life for the reader. The book is comprehensive, and the writing is excellent. At times humourous, at times analytical and, when appropriate, at times it reads like a novel of Bay Street wheelinga nd dealing.

My one criticism is that Mr. Newman's obvious dislike for Conrad Black, with whom Izzy Asper did busines, at times became too intrusive in the narrative. Mr. Black is not the subject of the story --- let it go!

Otherwise, excellent.½

Peter C. Newman's book is very enlighting to me. It is about politics and the people who were in the government and buisness in the 1960's - 1980's. Newman is an incredable writer who is able to make history very interesting and full of stories.

A great book to read. Mulroney makes his biases perfectly clear and the portrait that emerges is not as negative as the dispute between the author and the subject would lead us to believe. I must read for anyone interested in Canadian politics.

An interesting account of Mulroney's time in office. I went back and forth between liking him and not liking him! In the end, I think I liked him more than I did originally.

One of the best accounts of the early history of Canada as shaped by "The Bay".

2/8/23