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The Orkney Lad: The Story of Isobel Gunn
The first employees of the Hudson's Bay Company were true adventurers. Hbc needed strong men, brave enough to venture into foreign territory and labour under harsh weather conditions in the Canadian wilderness. Life for Company "servants" was not easy. Food was sometimes hard to come by, the mosquitoes swarmed and sanitation was next to naught. This was not the life for most men, let alone a woman.
Given the nature of the fur trader's work in Canada and the lifestyle that was led, the Company made it a policy not to hire European women. The only women employed by the Company were the local native women who helped run the daily operations of the posts, serving as cooks, guides and laundresses. Despite the strict policy against hiring European women for the fur trade, one woman from Scotland, Isobel Gunn, managed to convince the company to hire her for a three year term at 8 pounds per year. On June 29, 1806 she set sail aboard the Prince of Wales for Rupert's Land along with other Orkney lads and a cargo of geese, chickens and eggs. On the third week of August, the ship docked at Moose Factory and Isobel was taken by shallop, a smaller boat, to Fort Albany.
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Voyageurs at Dawn, Ontario, 1871 |
In fact, the Company thought Isobel Gunn was actually a man named "John Fubbister". A rather large woman, strong, and accustomed to intense labour, she had applied for work under this pseudonym. No one suspected that she was not a man. She dressed like a man, acted like a man and worked like a man and no one questioned her because she was able to do her job as well as any of the men. For two whole years nobody suspected Isobel's true identity: how this happened remains a mystery. But the story of how she came to be unmasked is not.
The journal entry of Alexander Henry is our primary source for the tale. He was head of the North West Company's post at Pembina (North Dakota) where Isobel was stationed during the winter along with other members of an Hbc brigade in 1807. As Henry's diary reveals, one night he answered a banging at his door. He opened the door to find "John Fubbister", in distress and in need of shelter, and offered him a place by the fire. Henry then retired to his quarters. Not long afterwards he heard Fubbister screaming and went to see what the matter was. It was only when John unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a pregnant stomach that Henry realized he had a woman on his hands.
His journal, dated December 29, 1807, reads:
"…I was much surprised to find him extended on the hearth, uttering dreadful lamentations; he stretched out his hands toward me, and in piteous tones begged to me to be kind to a poor helpless, abandoned wretch, who was not of the sex I had supposed, but an unfortunate Orkney girl, pregnant, and actually in childbirth."
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Stromness, Orkneys, Scotland, ca. 2000 |
The historical facts of Isobel's life are scant, leaving many questions unanswered. For example, we are left to wonder who the father of her child was. Isobel claimed that a man named John Scarth had taken her against her will and fathered her child. This story is plausible. There are records to show that John Scarth had travelled with Isobel on the main voyage out to Rupert's Land and was also part of the same brigades to Henley House and Pembina. He seems to have been in her company for much of the time she spent in Rupert's Land.
Why did Isobel join Hbc? Canadian author Audrey Thomas, in her recent novel Isobel Gunn, explains that Isobel's brother George also worked for Hbc and had shared terrific stories of adventure and excitement with her. These stories, suggests Thomas, inspired the adventurous spirit in Isobel. Other commentators point out that the money offered to Hbc workers was much more than Isobel could ever hope to make doing traditional woman's work in the Orkneys. And given that one side of her face was terribly disfigured by smallpox, her chances of finding a husband were slight, which left her little hope of finding the financial support of a marriage. Some have speculated that Isobel was actually a grand romantic who left the Orkneys in search of a lost lover who had abandoned her. She, however, she has left us no diary, so the truth is difficult to determine.
Isobel's story has proven to be very appealing to modern audiences. In addition to Audrey Thomas' novel there is also a documentary film called The Orkney Lad: The Story of Isabel Gunn, directed by award-winning filmmaker Anne Wheeler. Thanks to this interest, and despite the fact that Isobel's last years were rather bleak and uneventful, the two years she spent with the Hudson's Bay Company as John Fubbister will live on in the history books as one of the most daring feats ever accomplished by a woman of her time. She was Hudson's Bay Company's first female adventurer.
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