My husband was born in Napean, in the Province of Ontario, about the
end of 1846. Physically speaking, he was a, man of very fine
appearance. Over six feet in height and weighing about two hundred and
ten pounds. His youth was spent in his native place, where he went to
school and where he commenced his life of labor and exertion. I don't
know, exactly, when it was that I first met him; but I must have been
quite young, for I remember him these many years. He was, during the
last ten years that he lived in the Ottawa valley, foreman for
different lumber firms. Naturally gifted to command, he knew the great
duty of obedience, and this knowledge raised him in the estimation of
all those whose business he undertook to direct. And owing to that
good opinion, he received a general recommendation to the government,
and in the year 1879, he was appointed Indian instructor for the
north-west. Like my own life, his was uneventful. Outside the circle
of his friends--and that circle was large--he was unknown to the
public. Nor was he one of those who ever sought notoriety. His
disposition was the very opposite of a boastful one.
Often I heard tell of the north-west. But I never took any particular
interest in the country previous to his appointment and departure for
his new sphere. I knew by the map, that such a region existed--just as
I knew that there was a Brazil in South America, or a vast desert in
the centre of Africa.
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