Life and death by the frozen sea

"In September 1714, Governor James Knight, who was in his early seventies and one of the most experienced men ever to assume command of a Hudson's Bay Company post, arrived at Fort Bourbon on the western shores of Hudson Bay to take possession of the twenty-year-old French fort. He renamed it York Fort and it is subsequently remembered as York Factory. Knight's daily journal during his tenure (1714-17) at the fort offers an extraordinary narrative about the harrowing struggles that he and his men faced in establishing themselves and surviving in the harsh environment. Unlike most company officers, Knight talked freely about his personal feelings, especially his bouts of depression, and his health problems. In so doing, Knight offers the reader of today a rare glimpse into how the stresses that post managers faced could affect their mental and physical health, thus their leadership abilities. Knight took every opportunity to interrogate his aboriginal trading partners about their territories and those of their neighbours and his journals thus provide us with our first information in English (and some misinformation) about many of the First Nations of Canada's prairie west and subarctic and Inuit groups of the Arctic. Because of his age and previous experience, Knight's journals also provide crucial insights into all aspects of the business during the early eighteenth century. He was not loath to criticize company management and to offer ways to improve the profitability of company operations. Not least, his narratives offer some of the earliest descriptions of the protocols of the trade (many of which were carried over into the treaty-making era in western Canada two centuries later) including the use of indigenous emissaries both to gain the loyalty of indigenous traders and to curtail inter-tribal warfare that interfered with the trade."--