A personal journey of discovery
Local author Barbara Mitchell’ s new book tells the story of her ancestor, who helped map canoe routes in the 1700s
Local writer Barbara Mitchell says she’s “an unadverturous canoeist” who happens to be descended from an Englishman who traversed some of this country’s most treacherous rapids by canoe, with Cree guides, in the late 1700s.
Philip Turnor was the first inland surveyor for the Hudson’s Bay Co. who travelled 25,000 kilometres by canoe and by foot with his Cree wife between 1778 and 1792.
He later created the map that would serve as the foundation for all geographic knowledge of the north, at the time.
Mitchell, whose husband is O rm (son of writer W.O. Mitchell), found out 25 years ago that she is one of Turn or’ s many descendants in Canada.
Her new book, Mapmaker, tells both Turnor’s story and her own as she researches her family history and learns about both the mapmaker and about her Cree ancestry.
“This was my personal journey of discovery – it really was,” she said at her book launch Thursday night.
More than 150 people were at the launch at the Canadian Canoe Museum, where Mitchell read from the book and gave a talk.
This was the local launch: she also had a launch in October at the Hudson’s Bay Co. Archives in Winnipeg (where the original Turnor map, which measures 6’ by 8’, is kept).
Mitchell lives in Otonabee, and she taught English literature at Trent University in the 1970s and 1980s.
She later co-wrote, with her husband, a two-volume biography of W.O. Mitchell: Beginnings to Who
Has Seen the Wind (1999) and The Years of Fame (2005). Douglas Gibson, the former publisher and president of McClell and and Stewart, spoke at the launch on Thursday.
He said it’ s brilliant how Mitchell intersperses the historical facts about Turnor with her own story of uncovering her family’s past.
Mitchell told the crowd on Thursday that she took a chance with that approach, but she’s glad she did it. “It personalizes the history.”
Mapmaker is available in Peterborough at Chapters and the Canadian Canoe Museum. Mitchell said copies can also be ordered through Hunter Street Books.