at Grand Portage, and when the boundary between the United States and British territories was redrawn by the Treaty of Versailles in 1785, it moved to Fort William (at today’s Thunder Bay) on the north shore of Lake Superior. Fort William became the company’s trans-shipping centre, with forty-two buildings set in a rectangle and its own farm adjoining the fort to provide provisions such as grain, herbs, fresh vegetables, milk, and meat for both the regular staff and the Rendezvous that was held there annually during the summer months. The land behind the fort and on both sides of it was cleared and under tillage. Barley, peas, oats, Indian corn, potatoes, as well as other grains and vegetables were grown there. Seven horses, thirty-two cows and bulls, and a large number of sheep were kept on the farm, as well.[4]
How did this unique system work? To overcome the short summers and long winters in Canada, many of the partners of the company wintered in Montreal, spending their time assembling the trade goods, supervising the warehouses along the St. Lawrence River, and preparing for the year ahead. The rest of the partners manned the inland posts in the West and the far Northwest, trading and bartering directly with the First Nations for the pelts. They, too, were preparing for the year ahead. As soon as the ice was gone from the lakes and rivers, both groups started for Fort William. The inland traders used small canots du nord, which could be paddled by six men and portaged by two, and which held two tons of pelts and provisions for the thousand-mile journey. The Montreal merchants used Montreal canoes, or canots du maitre, which were large freight canoes, holding four tons of freight and each requiring ten French Canadian or Métis voyageurs as paddlers to cover approximately the same distance.
They [the canoes] reached lengths of forty feet, with a six-foot beam and a depth of two feet. The bow and stern curved upwards, often painted with animal or other designs. They weighed only five hundred pounds but they could carry as many as sixty men or fifty barrels of flour. They could be manufactured from cedar and pine and birch bark for as little as fifty dollars and would last for five or six years. First time travellers blanched when they saw their intended craft loaded to the gunwales perhaps a scant six inches from the water, but the Nor’westers calculated losses on voyages as low as one-half of one percent.
The canoe fleet carried a mess tent, 30 feet by 15 feet, and a separate sleeping tent and comfortable bed for each partner, carpets for their feet, beaver robes for their knees. The transport canoes went on ahead so that when the gentlemen reached the selected site for the night camp, a great fire was leaping, meat was sizzling, wine bottles were uncorked.[5]
American author Washington Irving, one of the guests of the North West Company, described the journey from Montreal:
They ascended the river in great state, like sovereigns making a progress, or rather like Highland chieftains navigating their subject lakes. They were wrapped in rich furs, their huge canoes freighted with every convenience and luxury, and manned by Canadian voyageurs, as obedient as Highland clansmen. They carried up with them cooks and bakers, together with delicacies of every kind, and abundances of choice wines for the banquets which attended this great convocation. Happy were they, too, if they could meet with some distinguished stranger; above all, some titled member of the British nobility, to accompany them on this stately occasion, and grace their high solemnities.[6]
In addition to the partners and the comforts they needed on the journey, here is a partial list of the commodities, particularly food and beverages, listed in the “Scheme for the NW Outfit” in 1794 that would have been transported to the inland headquarters to provision the fort: “10 kegs sugar, 8 kegs salt, 32 kegs butter, 80 kegs pork, 230 kegs grease, 40 kegs beef, 400 kegs high wines, 50 kegs rum, 10 kegs port wine, 10 kegs brandy, 20 kegs shrub, 3 kegs sausages, 17 bags green peas.”[7]
Meanwhile, Ross Cox, a Dublin-born fur trader who later became the Irish correspondent of the London Morning Herald, describes the French Canadian canoe men’s rations in 1817. They present a striking contrast to the food and beverages of the partners:
I know of no people capable of enduring so much hard labour as the Canadians, or so submissive to superiors. In voyages of six months’ duration, they commence at daybreak and from thence to night-fall hard paddling and carrying goods occupy their time without intermission…. Their rations at first view may appear enormous. Each man is allowed eight pounds of solid meat per diem, such as buffalo, deer, horse, etc., and ten pounds if there be bone in it. In the autumnal months, in lieu of meat, each man receives two large geese or four ducks. They are supplied with fish in the same proportion. It must, however, be recollected that these rations are unaccompanied by bread, biscuit, potatoes, or, in fact by vegetables of any description.
At Christmas and New Year they are served out with flour to make cakes or puddings, and each man receives half a pint of rum. This they call a regale, and they are particularly grateful for it.[8]
The Nor’Westers coming to Fort William from the inland posts also had to provision their teams. They soon learned that dried meat and fish, berries and greens from the forest, all took space in the canoes, and precious time could be wasted hunting and fishing. The First Nations introduced the newcomers to pemmican, made from dried buffalo, elk, or deer meat, pounded into a powder, mixed with dried berries, packed into a leather bag, then sealed with grease. Light, durable, and highly nourishing, the bags of pemmican were easily stored in a canoe, and thus pemmican became the staple diet of the canoe man. Small amounts of pemmican replaced large amounts of regular food, freeing up precious time and space to carry more furs and more trade goods in both directions.
Pemmican was used on voyages in the far interior. This was kind of pressed buffalo meat, pounded fine, to which hot grease was added, and the whole left to form a mould in a bag of buffalo skin. When properly made, pemmican would remain edible for more than one season. Its small bulk and great nutritional value made it highly esteemed by all voyageurs. From it they made a dish called “Rubbaboo” … it is a favourite dish with the northern voyageurs, when they could get it. It consists simply of pemmican made into a kind of soup by boiling water. Flour is added when it can be obtained, and it is generally considered more palatable with a little sugar.[9]
Pemmican initially gave the North West Company a great advantage over their Hudson’s Bay Company rivals, who continued to depend on bread, porridge, and meat cured with salt, instead of adapting to Native foods. However, as the story of Canadian food unfolds, we will soon learn that this dependence on pemmican, much of it produced by the buffalo hunters of the prairies and available at Pembina, the North West Company post on the Red River, would eventually be a major factor in the company’s demise.
In July the two groups began to assemble at the inland headquarters — the fur brigades from the west and the merchant partners from the east. It is not surprising then that the annual Rendezvous became a legendary time of feasting and celebration. The population of Fort William grew to about two thousand persons (at the same time the population of York, the capital of Upper Canada, was about six hundred) and included the English and Scottish merchants and their clerks; the French Canadian and Métis canoe men; and the men and women of the First Nations who were guides, advisers, and providers of specialized needs such as survival foods for the chain of forts and posts stretching into the interior.
The central building at Fort William was the Great Hall, and these descriptions tell us how it appeared to two travellers of the period:
In the middle of a gracious square rises a large building elegantly constructed, though of wood, with a long piazza or portico, raised about five feet from the ground, and surmounted by a balcony, extending along the whole front. In the centre is a saloon or hall, sixty feet in length by thirty in width, decorated with several pieces of painting and some portraits of the leading partners. It is in this hall that the agents, partners, clerks, interpreters and guides, take their meal together, at different tables. The kitchen and servants’ rooms are in the basement.[10]
The dining hall is a noble apartment, and sufficiently capacious to entertain two hundred.
