My new book The Fort George Murders of 1823: Crisis and Co-existence, is now available in bookstores and online. It has been published by Caitlin Press.

In 1823, two violent murders upset the trading relationship between the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Indigenous nations in New Caledonia. The HBC had called the area around Fort George (today’s Prince George), Fort St. James and Fraser’s Lake New Caledonia. The HBC had come into the district in 1805 and set up several trading posts to handle the trade in beaver and other pelts the Indigenous people eagerly brought to trade for industrial goods from Europe.  The Fort George Murders of 1823: Crisis and Co-existence in New Caledonia is about the seven years that followed the murders. Not a who-dun-it, but definitely a revealing narrative of conflict and co-existence, it examines why the murders happened, the possibility that the rupture would cause the HBC to abandon the trade west of the Rockies altogether and the efforts of wise Indigenous and HBC leaders to handle the crisis. And what happened to the murderers. It is a story of complicated relationships, one in which James Murray Yale, John Stuart, Sir George Simpson and Chiefs Kw’eh, Yas Cho and Tzee Aze all play leading parts.  And it looks in detail at the actions of the young clerk James Douglas and why this was important for the history of British Columbia