Peter Fidler was one of Canada’s greatest exploratory surveyors and his work formed the basis for the mapping of Western Canada. He produced two large-scale shoreline sketch maps, eight smaller-scale maps, and 373 segmental sketch maps, representing 7,300 miles of track and river. While travelling an estimated 48,000 miles by foot and canoe, he assisted in the establishment of several Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) trading houses and kept detailed astronomical and meteorological records, and records of First Nations’ ways of life.

Born in Bolsover in 1769, Fidler joined the HBC in London as a labourer in 1788. In 1789, at Cumberland House in present-day Saskatchewan, he began training as a surveyor under Philip Turnor, the first HBC surveyor to push extensively into the Canadian interior.

Fidler’s first major expedition was the Athabasca expedition of 1790–92. His brief was to ‘survey those parts in order to settle some dubious points of Geography.’ [1] He was also to observe the nature of fur-trade competition from the North-West Company, and find a short and navigable passage from Hudson Bay to the Athabasca and Great Slave Lakes – effectively, a North-West Passage cutting through North America. It was ascertained that this waterway did not exist, but the voyage honed Fidler’s skills: Philip Turnor noted that Fidler had ‘become an astronomer’ during the expedition, and that he was ‘a very fit hand for the Country as he can stand hunger and the Weather well.'[2]

In 1792, Turnor returned to England and Fidler was appointed chief surveyor and mapmaker to the HBC. Fidler continued surveying until 1802, when conflict between the HBC and the North-West Company shifted the focus onto maintaining existing trading houses, rather than establishing new ones. From then, Fidler spent prolonged periods at various trading posts, never returning to the often-dangerous expeditions of his earlier career. In 1810–21 he acted as chief trader at various trading houses, and died in 1822, aged 54.

Fidler’s mapping and surveying

Fidler possessed some of the finest scientific instruments available. His Dollond achromatic telescope, a brass sextant, a thermometer, a small brass compass, an artificial horizon, a pair of parallel glasses, 3lb of mercury and a watch cost him a total of £26 at a time when his annual salary was no more than £25.[3] His calculations relating to the lunar eclipse of 28 April 1790 were published in the almanacs Vox Stellarum, or a Loyal Almanac for the year of Human Redemption, 1790 and Merlinus Liberatus 1790.[4] He recorded the temperature three times per day for 22 years, using two thermometers provided by the HBC.[5] However, his perigrinatory lifestyle means his records are not useful for studying long-term meteorological patterns at any one location.

Fidler and First Nations

From an early stage in his career, Fidler was eager to become well acquainted with First Peoples. A colleague noted in 1791 that ‘he is very fond of learning their [Ojibwe] language, which will be very necessary if your Honours settles this Quarter.'[6] He travelled the Slave Lake region with an Ojibwe band in September 1791 to April 1792. He spent the winter of 1792–3 in the northern Great Plains with a Piikani band, hunting bison. In 1794, he married a Cree woman known to us as Mary; they would go on to have 14 children.

During his residence at Chesterfield House (Southern Saskatchewan) in 1800–1, Fidler collected many birch-bark maps, copied them onto paper and forwarded them to HBC headquarters in London. One of these maps, drawn by the Blackfoot chief A-Ca-Oo-Mah-Ca-Ye (Old Swan), was so important that the cartographer, Aaron Arrowsmith incorporated it into his map of North America, published in 1802.[7]

As well as keeping cartographic, meteorological and astronomical records, Fidler also realised the importance of ethnography and languages. His notebooks included a description of a native game and a dictionary of 30 First Nations languages which is, unfortunately, now lost.[8]

An isolated life?

Fidler’s journey might inspire images of a lone explorer striking out into the wilderness, but he could not have survived without human interaction, and local guides in particular. While traders and their guides endured many hardships, there were other aspects to life in Rupert’s Land. Traders had a day’s holiday for Christmas and the New Year, sometimes travelling to the next trading post to dine together and share extra rations. Throughout the long winters, they occupied themselves by playing cards, making clothes and making copies of their journals. Fidler spent much of his time in the spring and summer of 1796–7 planting a vegetable garden at Cumberland House. He possessed a library of some 500 volumes, including histories, travelogues, books on economics, medicine, and natural history, and he and his colleagues traded books and newspapers with each other.[9]

References:

[1]  Peter Fidler. “A Journal from Isle a la Cross by way of Swan Lake a new Track to the Athapescow Lake in the Year 1791.” MS. Library and Archives Canada, microfilm HBC 4M3 (E.3/1), p. 1.

[2] Journals of Samuel Hearne and Philip Turnor, edited by J.B. Tyrrell, Champlain Society, 1934, pp. 443, 447.

[3] Peter Broughton. “The Accuracy and Use of Sextants and Watches in Rupert’s Land in the 1790s.” Annals of Science, vol. 66, no. 2, 2009, pp. 217–18.

[4] Ted Binnema. “Theory and Experience: Peter Fidler and the Transatlantic Indian.” Native Americans and Anglo-American Culture, 1750–1850: The Indian Atlantic, edited by Tim Fulford and Kevin Hutchings, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 155, 167n.

[5] “Fidler, Peter, 1769–1822.” Eighteenth-Century Naturalists of Hudson Bay, edited by Stuart Houston, Tim Ball and Mary Houston, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003, p. 94.

[6] Malcolm Ross, quoted in Journals of Samuel Hearne and Philip Turnor, edited by J.B. Tyrrell, Champlain Society, 1934, p. 443.

[7] Robert S. Allen. “Fidler, Peter.” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 6, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed November 28, 2016, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/fidler_peter_6E.html.

[8] Peter Fidler. “Journal of a Journey over Land from Buckingham House to the Rocky Mountains in 1792 & 3.”MS. Library and Archives Canada, microfilm HBC 4M4 (E.3/2), pp. 31, 34.

[9] Angela Byrne. “Scientific Practice and the Scientific Self in Rupert’s Land, c.1770–1830: Fur Trade Networks of Knowledge Exchange.” Spaces of Global Knowledge: Exhibition, Encounter and Exchange in an Age of Empire, edited by Diarmid A. Finnegan and Jonathan J. Wright. Ashgate, 2015, pp. 79–95.