Every March between 1826 and 1854, the York Factory Express began its journey from the Hudson's Bay Company's Pacific coast headquarters at Fort Vancouver. They paddled their canoe-shaped boats up the Columbia River to the base of the Rocky Mountains at Boat Encampment, a thousand upriver miles from home. At Jasper's House they were three thousand feet above sea level. Their river route would return them to salt water once more at York Factory on the shores of Hudson Bay. On their journey home they would do a similar climb and descent, reaching Fort Vancouver seven months after they had departed.
The stories of the York Factory Express, and of the Saskatchewan Brigades east of the Rockies, are told in the voices of the educated gentlemen who kept the journals. However, the voyageurs who made the journey possible are the invisible, unnamed Canadiens, Orkneymen, Iroquois, and their Métis children and grandchildren, who powered the boats across the continent every year. Their history was oral: if the traders had not preserved the stories the voyageurs told them, we would not know this history today -- as it is portrayed in The York Factory Express.
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