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Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 4
A Brief History of Lower Fort Garry
by Dale Miquelon
An Explorer and a Recorder
When the Simpsons moved to the Stone Fort, they were
accompanied by George's cousin, Thomas, who acted as bookkeeper. He
held the position during the 1833-34 season. His residency would be of
little interest were it not that he shortly became a celebrated Arctic
explorer. It is asserted by some that he remained at the lower fort
during the fall and winter of 1836, and that he there studied astronomy
and related subjects preparatory to his voyage of discovery with Peter
Warren Dease. Simpson himself connected the work of Sir John Franklin
and Lieutenant Back by tracing the Arctic coast from the mouth of the
Mackenzie to Point Barrow. Never one for modesty, Thomas wrote his
brother, "I and I alone have the well-earned honour of uniting
the Arctic to the great Western Ocean, and of unfurling the British flag
on Point Barrow." He was awarded the Queen's Arctic Medal and a life
pension of £100 per annum. He did not live to receive these
honours, dying of a gun shot wound under mysterious circumstances on the
St. Paul trail in 1840.1
A decade of obscurity descended upon the fort. The
sales shop remained open for the benefit of the lower settlement, but
most business and all administration was carried on at the upper fort.
The seed of discord was planted in this quiet soil in 1839 when Adam
Thom clambered out of a York boat and established himself in the Big
House of Lower Fort Garry as the first recorder of Rupert's Land. As
recorder, he was the colony's judge and the Company's legal adviser.
Thom had been a journalist while attending law school in
Montreal, and his "Anti-Gallic Letters," published in
the pro-English Montreal Herald had helped foment the rebellion
of 1837. Lord Durham had taken him to England in 1839 to help in the
preparation of his famous report. In London he met Simpson who hired him
as recorder. His appearance at Lower Fort Garry was an altogether
unfortunate one for Red River.2
In spite of his Gallophobia, Thom did not cause any
great dissension until 1844. From that year his legal advice, which
helped to bolster the Company in its suppression of free trade, aroused
a storm of resentment. Bryce compared him to Charles I's Wentworth, a
good man with a bad cause, being pitted against the "Village Hampton,"
free trader James Sinclair.3 The disaffection in the colony
aroused by the free-trade controversy moved Simpson to begin
negotiations with the British government for the establishment of
troops in Red River. Their arrival in 1846 would again bring animation
to the Stone Fort.
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