Interview with Jean Barman

Jean Barman won the 2015 Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for her new book, French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest. The prize is awarded annually to the best academic book on Canadian history, and this October in Ottawa Barman will also receive the Governor General’s History Award for Scholarly Research. The professor emeritus in the University of British Columbia’s department of educational studies spoke with editor-in-chief Mark Reid about the crucial role played by fur traders and their indigenous brides in keeping the Pacific coast Canadian.

You make the case that the fur traders helped to keep the West Coast Canadian. 

When it came time to set the boundary, Britain wasn’t interested in colonies. The United States desperately wanted it all — they wanted to get their hands on Russian America, which was Alaska, and they were getting their hands on California. Britain would have given in, but the Hudson’s Bay Company persuaded them that they should hold on to part of [the northwest], because they were making money. And so, except for French Canadians — the people who were the backbone working for the fur trade and the main outsider group in the Pacific Northwest — Canada would have no Pacific shoreline today.

Your book also looks at how women impacted the fur trade there. 

French Canadians came to work for the HBC. They had worked before for the North West Company out of Montreal, and they stayed. The reason they stayed is that they could partner with indigenous women. There were no Catholic priests in the Pacific Northwest until 1848. It was a relationship they could have squandered. They could have hit and run, but instead they stayed, and they had large families together. They have descendants all over the Pacific Northwest to the present day. The Indigenous women are really powerful in that these are not just relationships of pleasure — the women worked very, very hard in the fur economy as well.

How does it feel to win the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize? 

I was totally astonished! ... It was a book that I wrote because I wanted descendants to feel themselves in it — I had many descendants get in touch with me. I thought that maybe a few people in British Columbia would think about it, but to think that [my book] had a national audience is really astonishing. It was unthinkable. When I found out the book was shortlisted, I thought that was unthinkable. And when I found out that it won — it was far more unthinkable! I’m still trying to figure out quite what it was that other people saw in it. I’m pleased that they did, and I suspect, over time, I will know.