Image 3: People departing Fort Garry in 1862. Artist William George Richardson Hind travelled with one of the parties, sketching people and scenes along the way.
Image 4: Catherine Schubert, wife of Augustus Schubert, insisted on accompanying her husband. She was pregnant and gave birth to the fourth of her children at a Native village along the Thompson River.
Image 5: A Red River cart train in 1862, pulled by horses rather than oxen.
Image 6: Sometimes the Overlanders were able to raft their oxen and carts over the many rivers they had to cross.
Image 7: Other times the oxen were made to ford the river or even to swim to the opposite side.
Image 8: A view that many of the Overlanders probably grew tired of, farther into the journey. The oxen were useful in crossing the prairie, and were used as pack animals once the carts were no longer practical.
Image 9: An 1889 miner’s certificate issued by the Gold Commissioner in Richfield. The mining licence still cost the same as in 1862 — five dollars.
Image 10: A pack train of mules in 1868 Barkerville. Though mules were the most common animals used, oxen were also used with pack saddles.
Image 11: One of the last camels used as a pack animal in the Cariboo. The animals originally came from Russia, for use in the California gold fields. Twenty-three were later brought north to British Columbia.
Image 12: Native men and even women, like this group in Moricetown in the 1900s, were hired to pack supplies.
Image 13: The Never-sweat Company tunnel, Williams Creek, 1868.
Image 14: Men standing at the windlass at the Barker Claim on Williams Creek in 1867.
Image 15: Prospectors panning for gold.
Image 16: One of the huge Cornish wheels used to remove water from the shafts.
Image 17: The Sheephead Mine on Williams Creek in 1867.
Image 18: Canada in 1862, with the Overlanders’ route from Fort Garry to the Cariboo.
Image 19: The Overlanders’ main route to the Cariboo after crossing the mountains was down the Fraser River. The Schuberts and some others travelled down the Thompson River.
Credits
Cover portrait: Detail from The Zandvoort Fishergirl, 1884 by Elizabeth Adela Stanhope Forbes, courtesy of Newlyn Orion Galleries Ltd., Penzance, Cornwall, UK / Bridgeman Art Library. Cover background: Detail, colourized, from Mining Village (Richfield), Richfield, B.C., 1867-1868, National Archives of Canada, C-24290.
Image 1: Manton Marble, Fort Garry in 1860, Provincial Archives of Manitoba.
Image 2: Thomas McMicking, British Columbia Archives, A-01418.
Image 3: Miners Leaving Fort Garry, William Hind’s Overlanders of ’62 Sketchbook, National Archives of Canada, C-009583.
Image 4: Catherine, Mrs. Francis Augustus Schubert, British Columbia Archives, A-03081.
Image 5: William Hind, Red River Cart Train, Metro Toronto Library, John Ross Robertson Collection, T16352.
Image 6: Crossing the Assiniboine from the East Side, William Hind’s Overlanders of ’62 Sketchbook, National Archives of Canada, C-022710.
Image 7: Ox cart crossing a river, William Hind’s Overlanders of ’62 Sketchbook, National Archives of Canada, C-033708.
Image 8: Rear View of a Harnessed Ox, William Hind’s Overlanders of ’62 Sketchbook, National Archives of Canada, C-033710.
Image 9: John Boyd Miner’s Certificate, British Columbia Archives, MS-2788 file 17.
Image 10: Pack Train, Barkerville, British Columbia Archives, C-08171.
Image 11: The Last of the Camels from the Cariboo Road, British Columbia Archives, A-00347.
Image 12: Moricetown, Indian Women Packers, British Columbia Archives, G-04121.
Image 13: The Never-sweat Company tunnel, Williams Creek, B.C., 1868, Frederick Dally, The National Archives of Canada, C-173.
Image 14: Windlass at the Barker Claim, Williams Creek, B.C., 1867-1868, Frederick Dally, National Archives of Canada, C-19424.
Image 15: Prospectors with gold pan, Glenbow Museum, NA-2426-10.
Image 16: Cornish wheel, British Columbia Archives, A-00558.
Image 17: The Sheephead, Williams Creek, British Columbia, 1867-1868, Frederick Dally, National Archives of Canada C-19423.
Sketches in June 22, August 13 and September 24 diary entries by Bree Flowers.
Images 18 and 19: Maps by Paul Heersink/Paperglyphs. Map data © 2002 Government of Canada with permission from Natural Resources Canada.
Thanks to Barbara Hehner for her careful checking of the manuscript; to Richard Thomas Wright, author of Overlanders 1858 Gold, to Dr. Jean Barman, Professor of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia and author of The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, and to Roderick J. Barman, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of British Columbia and author of “Packing in British Columbia,” in The Journal of Transport History (September 2000), for sharing their historical expertise.
For my niece, Jennifer Haworth, who has successfully scaled a few mountains herself.
About the Author
Barbara Haworth-Attard is hooked on writing historical fiction — many of her books are set in historical times. But her interest in the people who made the dangerous trek west to the Cariboo came about partly by accident. “It was when I was doing research for another book that I first came across the term ‘The Overlanders,’” she says. “At that time I made note of the subject, as I often do when something interests me, and went on with my other book. So it was great to be able to go back and delve deeper into the Overlanders’ amazing journey from Fort Garry to the Cariboo for this diary.”
What drew her to the story was how the people — ordinary people for the most part, shop clerks and millers and merchants — managed to survive such a difficult expedition. “I am always intrigued by those people who are adventurers: those who look at mountains and want to climb, who look at oceans and want to cross, who look into space and want to reach stars. But even more fascinating are those people who perhaps are not adventurers in the true sense of the word but, like Harriet, are pulled into situations they might not normally find themselves in and, most importantly, rise to the occasion.”
Harriet was a fun character to get to know, Barbara says. “One of the greatest challenges in writing historical fiction is to get the era in proper perspective with the character’s eyes, and keep it true without letting the here and now creep in.” For this she relies heavily on diaries and first-hand accounts to provide her with a window to the era she is writing about. “The most fascinating part of writing, for me, is creating a character who feels real by the end of the book.”
Barbara admires Harriet’s spunk and determination, something the people in the McMicking party needed to help them reach the Cariboo, as well. “For me, the story of the Overlanders is about inner strength; about going on when you do not think you can take another step, about eating skunk when you’re hungry — and finding it tasty — and lending a hand to the person beside you who is stumbling. I look at Catherine Schubert, with three children and another on the way, climbing through swamps and forests and I think: I could never do that. But oddly enough, most of us could and would if we needed to.
“And thank goodness we do have daring and courage and perseverance inside, because these arethe characteristics that settled Canada and will some day settle Mars, that produced vaccinations for smallpox and polio and will some day cure cancer; that produce music and art and even very practical things such as new farming practices.” Barb likes to think that Harriet’s story might encourage readers to go on towards their own dreams, even if they think they cannot take another step. Her advice (and Harriet’s): “You really can.”
Barbara has written more than ten books, half of them historical, the others fantasy and contemporary novels. She was nominated for the Governor-General’s Award in 2003 for Theories of Relativity, the story of a boy who is struggling to survive on the street. Another novel, Home Child, depicts the life of
a thirteen-year-old boy who, like many other “home children,” is sent from poverty in England to the Canadian prairies as a labourer, and who earns the friendship of the young girl whose family took him in. Home Child was shortlisted for the Mr. Christie’s Book Award, the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People, the Silver Birch Award and the Red Cedar Award. Love-Lies-Bleeding, a Geoffrey Bilson and Red Cedar nominee, is a World War I story based on Barbara’s father’s letters home from the war. Irish Chain is set around the time of the 1917 Halifax Explosion.
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Triffie Winsor is a fictional character created by the author, and her diary is a work of fiction.
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Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Haworth-Attard
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ISBN: 978-1-4431-2816-2
First eBook edition: July 2015
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