Connection with Revenant movie
Calderdale has a fur trappers link
Leonardo di Caprio picked up the Golden Globe Award as Best Actor recently for his performance in the American western adventure film The Revenant. The film, or rather the book on which it was based, was inspired by the exploits of fur trapper Hugh Glass in early 19th Century Montana and South Dakota. In the film, we are reminded of a long past era when fur trapping in North America was widespread and normal; although today I trust the practice is not. How many local people realise that Calderdale has some significant connections with the North American fur trade? In the north aisle of Halifax Minster is a tombstone bearing the inscription “William Frobisher, owner.” William lived from 1749-1830, and three of his brothers - Benjamin, Thomas and Joseph - all baptised here, emigrated to Montréal in the 1760s, soon after Québec province was captured by the British from the French. During the 1770s, the Frobisher brothers were all involved with exploring the little-known wildernesses of mid and northern Canada on gruelling fur-trading expeditions. One of them even reached the remote Athabasca region. In the winter of 1783-4, the Frobisher brothers’ business company was merged with that of the great Simonon McTavish [1750?-1804], thushus establishing the notable Montréal-based NorthWest Company, which rivalled the better known London-based Hudson’s Bay Company for control of thehe fur trade, contesting the latatter’s monopoly. But in Montreal, the Frobishishers had already made theirir fortune. Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, later to become the fatherr of Queen Victoria, lived fromm 1791-93 in Québec, and whenhen he visited Montreal he stayed with Joseph Frobisher, who lived in “great style” at Beaver Hall in that place. Joseph - baptised at Halifax on April 18, 1748 - died at Montréal on September 12, 1810; and he is regarded as one of the founders of the commercial metropolis of Canada. Fifteen years after the Frobishers’ greatest journey, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, the paramount explorer of the Canadian North-west, travelled over the same ground as them, going much further. We know that he was inspired by the Frobisher brothers’ exploits, for in a book he had published in 1810, he mentioned their great pluck and endurance. In 1821, the North West C Company was to amalgamate with the Hudson’s Bay Company under the latter company’s name, creating a fur-trading monopoly that covered a quarter of North America. Another local link with the fur trade involves LtCol Archibald Norman MacLeod, a native of the Isle of Mull, who was buried at Coley Church in AprilAp 1841; he was father-inlaw to the vicar at the time. MacLeod (the spelling of his surname varies) was attracted