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| Coureur des Bois Ken |
The Europeans who came to Canada 600 years ago found wealth in many forms. Cod were so plentiful you could practically walk across the water on their backs and Jacques Cartier wrote that sometimes the cod "stayed his ships".
By the early 1700's, Great Britain's mighty fleets faced a shortage of timber suitable for building new ships. The forests of the New World were exploitable.
For three hundred years (until silk hats became popular around 1850) hats made from felted beaver fur were fashionable. The lucrative fur trade was a driving force in the European invasion of Canada and it was powered by intrepid adventurers working for themselves or the Hudson's Bay Company.
They (coureurs des bois, voyageurs, pedleurs, men of the North, eaters of lard) worked 12 to 14 hour days. They tended to be small and very strong. They canoed and portaged trade goods into the interior and then brought the furs back out. It cannot have been an easy life and yet 14,000 men made their living this way.
For most, this was seasonal work but there were those who stayed in the woods all winter, hivernants.
In a CBC radio skit, someone asked when the M
étis arrived in Canada and a First Nations actor answered wryly,
"9 months after the French."
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