T.A. Reynolds Served Forty Years(1)
Retired H.B.C. Fur Trader Interviewed at “Last Camp”
By W.M. Conn
MR. T. A. REYNOLDS(2), after serving for nearly forty years inland for the Hudson’s Bay Company, retired in 1903 and returned to civilization, settling at Brockville, on the St. Lawrence. There he built a most delightful rustic home and named it “Last Camp”.
Mr. Reynolds’ last charge with H.B.C. was the Gulf Posts, with headquarters at Bersimis, Quebec, where he lived for six years.
In 1876 he was ordered from the province of Quebec to the Lake Superior district, to follow up and prevent from trading an all-round “desperado” from Minnesota who had gone into the interior to trade with and overawe the Indians(3). This man and his party had been in Canada during the season of 1875, and had intimidated the manager of a small outpost and actually taken furs from the store. He was an expert rifle and pistol shot, and had two notches on his Colt’s, accounting for the lives of two men somewhere in the far Western United States.
With four men, Mr. Reynolds took the trail at Red Rock(4) in October, overhauled the opposition group two days before Christmas and built a shack adjacent to the gunman’s quarters. From then on until the following June, Mr. Reynolds kept strict watch over the gunman and his party night and day. Finally, he followed him down to Lake Superior and saw him depart for Duluth. He says this was one of the most trying and nerve wracking experience of his service. When he took up the work he weighed one hundred seventy-seven pounds, and when he reached the coast the following spring he weighed only one hundred thirty.
On his retirement, Mr. Reynolds took up literature as a pastime and has contributed, under a pen name, articles and short stories to the leading outdoor magazines in Canada and the United States.
A collection of some these stories was brought out in book form in 1907 under the title “Canadian Wilds” and has run into several editions.
From last accounts Mr. Reynolds, who is now in his seventy-eighth year, is enjoying good health and says his one regret is that The Beaver was not published in his day.(5)
END NOTES
1 Article from The Beaver magazine, April 1921.
2 Thomas Aldridge Reynolds was born in 1844 in Montreal. In 1865 he embarked on a career in the fur trade starting at Temiscamingue, PQ. In 1876 he moved to the Michipicoten-Nipigon Districts and then in 1881 back to remote posts in Quebec. He married Elizabeth Finlayson of Brockville, ON, in 1881, fathering a daughter Lena (“Willow”) and three sons. In 1904 he retired to Brockville, passing away in 1926. He wrote a number of articles in magazines using the pen name Martin Hunter, and in 1907, published one collection, Canadian Wilds. There is a still unpublished collection.
3 “Indian”, a perfectly acceptable term in 1921, has been supplanted by “Indigenous person”.
4 In 1876, Red Rock was the HBC post at the mouth of the Nipigon River, on the right bank, where the modern community of Nipigon is located. Not to be confused with Nipigon House, a post on the western shore of Lake Nipigon. Reynolds overhauled the “desperado” in December, which suggests he was pursuing on snowshoes, possibly accompanied by a dog team. His trip in June suggests he was following on foot or, more likely, by canoe. Construction work on the Canadian Pacific Railway between Nipigon River and Thunder Bay did not begin until 1881.
5 The Beaver magazine, an organ of the HBC, began publication in October 1920.
