Fort Vancouver

Part III of the Research Trip

Saturday dawned wet and miserable.  I just wasn’t meant to visit Fort Vancouver in comfort, but  I did manage to comfort myself with a trip to Fabric Depot, to indulge in my other passion, quilting.  Today I dream of the acre of material and sewing notions, thinking of ways on how to get back to Fabric Depot,  let’s not forget Powell Books either.   This trip though was not about shopping it was about research.

My first stop was to the gift store, in hopes that the rain would let up. Realizing that it was going to rain all day, I pulled the hood of my rain jacket up over my head and started for the car and drove down to the parking lot near the fort.

I stood before the fort, with images of brigades, canoes and horses moving through my mind.  It was here that everything I had been reading finally came together, for this is where Peter Skene Ogden, Dr. McLoughlin, Etienne Lucier and Donald Manson had all resided before starting out or finishing a long brigade.   On the outside the fort wall was a large vegetable garden. Somehow I don’t think there were cement walkways back in the 1840s, but I think those working the garden at the time would have appreciated the cement.  I really like the poles they are using for the beans rather than stringing them out in a line.  The perfume of the pink roses had me standing under the arbor with a cloud of the aroma swirling around my head, that is, until the sneezing started.  With my camera snuggle under the rain jacket I paid a short visit to the small interpreters’ hut and found a guide, I had just entered through the back gate, but where was the front gate?  I  would have to wait to discover that it was directly across from the interpreter’s hut.  I was going clockwise around the fort and my first stop was the kitchen and where the voyageurs and non-officers of the HBC would have eaten.  The kitchen is located just behind the big house where the Chief Factor lived and where there are two smaller dining rooms.

Unfortunately, the main dining room was behind a door with a window in it and the only shot I could get was through the window. So you will see me in taking the picture.  This is where McLoughlin would have entertained the senior officers of the HBC with vegetables from the garden, game hunted in the area or perhaps salmon with accruements brought overland by one of the brigades.  It would be here that stories of the exploits on the trail would be retold, prices of furs discussed, politics eagerly debated with large qualities of spirits. 

  The following picture is of the big house taken from near the front gate.

The dining room is at the back of the house, with a smaller dining room on the right side of the main entrance and on the left was a large living area.

In the background of the following picture, you will see two grey buildings, the farthest on is the infirmary, while the next one is where the archaeologies have a large lab for detailing and cataloguing their finds.

I’m standing at the base of the bastion, which looks northwest. From here HBC staff would have seen the brigades arriving from the north and Fort Langley.  I understand from several people at Fort Nisqually that the I5 freeway follows the old original brigade trail from Fort Langley.

The layout of the wood shop is very similar to the one at Fort Langley.  The picture below is of the counting house, which only at Fort Vancouver.  In most cases, there was an area either in the big house (Fort Langley) or in the store (Fort St. James) for a clerk to record transactions.

The day that I visited the Fort (June 2011) there was an enactment of the brigade days (when the first brigades arrive after winter) going on by the local Fort Vancouver. Participating in this enactment were children from the Dame School and the Young Engage.  Even in the rain, the children were having a great day with crafts and games.

It was a wonderful trip to Oregon and now my heart longs to go back and once again trace the steps of my ancestors.  Somehow seeing the place for myself makes my ancestors more real, there isn’t a day go by that I don’t think of what life must have been like for these individuals.  I often wonder if life was better then than it is now.  I drove all the way home to Mission, BC in nonstop rain and wondered what the trip on horseback for two weeks would have been like.