two
Reckless Deeds on Distant Shores
Failure has its own momentum. John McLoughlin Jr. was all of fourteen and had floundered as both a son and a student. He was in dire need of a job, but without family wealth or a proper education, his prospects were limited. Times being what they were, John had little say in his choice of profession as tradition held that a father selected his progeny’s career, largely because he was expected to pay for it.
Dr. McLoughlin did not care to throw good money after bad, having already wasted hundreds of pounds trying to educate the boy. He was also forced to admit he knew little of the interests or abilities of the son he had so long ignored. Thoroughly vexed, he told John, “I have written my friends to consider what Business you are qualifi’d for and to place you accordingly,” but never paused to ask what John’s wishes might be. The elder McLoughlin sought guidance from his uncle Simon, who was the closest thing John Jr. had to a true father figure: “I do not know what to do with my Son — what do you think he is fit for?” Simon Fraser had told McLoughlin Sr. to consider “purchasing an Ensigncy for him. I think he would make a good soldier; he is bold and quick in his motions, a Commission would cost 400£. To make him a Merchant would cost you much more and I think he would not have an equal chance of success.”
Other suggestions poured in, although none offered much hope for John’s future endeavours. Sister St. Henry cautioned against shipping him off to his grandmother in Rivière-du-Loup, worried that the blind and bedridden Angelique McLoughlin was “too infirm to control the wild youth.” When it came to the question of occupation, the most Sister St. Henry could offer was “I do not expect to see J. McLoughlin as a farmer.” In truth, she feared “he would fall from excesses to excesses, if he does not have a Master.” Dr. Simon Fraser was equally pessimistic: “The best thing that can be done for the young man is to make him an Indian Trader.…I do not think he would succeed as a Physician, he would have to go thro a long course of studies. These boys are remarkable for want of steadiness and application tho by no means deficient in understanding.” Fraser’s derisive use of “these boys” referred to all “boys of mixed blood,” and it was clear John’s heritage had coloured his great-uncle’s opinion of him.
On February 1, 1830, Dr. McLoughlin drafted letters to Simon Fraser and his son announcing his decision regarding John’s career options, but he was too late. John had set sail for Paris on October 26, 1829, to become ward to his uncle Dr. David McLoughlin. Fraser, who was tired of evading disaster, made the decision. The situation in Montreal had grown so dire, Fraser later told John, he had no choice, for “young as you were when you went to France, your reputation was such that I could find no situation for you in Canada.”
John McLoughlin Sr. did not learn of his son’s departure until George Simpson told him almost one year later, but Dr. McLoughlin was not the only one wilfully ignorant of his son. Simon Fraser once freely admitted he “did not know John’s age,” despite having cared for the boy for six years. It is safe to assume that, when John was a child, his birthdays passed without celebration or notice.
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Life took a decided upturn for John McLoughlin Jr. as he passed from shore to shore, for his uncle’s reputation as a prominent surgeon admitted McLoughlin into the top tier of Parisian society. Young John could scarcely contain his glee as he recounted his adventures to his cousin John Fraser: “I spent the winter very gay. I have been to balls even where the Royal family was and also I had a moment’s conversation with the Prince and I hope and wish I shall go to the castle.” John’s wish was granted less than one year later, and he boasted, “I have been to the Kings Bals [sic] and have been presented to him.” To hear him tell it, he was now rubbing elbows with the French elite: “I am received in the first society in Paris.”
John’s braggadocio extended to his gaming pursuits, and he told his family, “I have learned to fence and I am reckoned a good fencer.” Yet his past indiscretions continued to haunt him: “I have been attacked and called out by a school fellow of mine, but never took notice of him, for there is no use of fighting unless there is great offence…perhaps I should have wounded him and it would have served him very much to have done it.” It was this mature and reflective John who wrote, “I shall always endeavour to satisfy everybody, this is if I can. If I fail it will not be by want of hard application.…I regret every moment I lost. I wish I had to begin over again my studies.”
Not everyone was impressed by the new and improved John McLoughlin. Simon Fraser cut all ties to his young charge the moment he put him on the boat for France. McLoughlin sent many missives from Paris to Dr. Fraser, but his efforts garnered no reply. After more than two years without a word from his guardian, John faced the matter head-on, asking, “Ah what can be the cause of your long silence to me? Am I the cause of it? If so, tell me on what occasion.” The questions were rhetorical, for he already knew the answer: “Alas can I ever cease regretting the loss of your love and regard; no never, I imagine that you must have heard some reports of my conduct.”
John’s desperation to win Fraser’s affection was palpable in his tales of academic accomplishments: “I have passed the examination of Bechelier en lettres and passed it with credit. As soon as I left the room every gentleman said that it was myself that had passed the best of the whole.…I study from ten in the morning till three and then rest till six and from then I study for three hours more.” In a heartbreaking addendum, John acknowledged his credibility was shot: “I do not like to say much for myself but you ought to ask my Uncle about it, for you might think that I am not telling the truth or I am praising myself too much.” It was a humbling skirmish in a battle long lost.
John began his fourth year in Paris as he had spent the first three: studying anatomy and medicine under the tutelage of his uncle, and soaking up all the exquisite pleasures of the city. Although his letters to Montreal went unanswered, the self-portrait they paint is of a diligent and thoughtful student, eager to adhere to the straight and narrow. And so, in November 1833, the news that David McLoughlin had ordered his nephew to return home — suddenly and without explanation — was met by all with shock, confusion, and a sinking sense of déjà vu.
As usual, John McLoughlin Sr. was the last to know, learning of his son’s abrupt banishment in a letter from his brother that complained bitterly of John’s profligate ways. Before it was posted, David had shown the letter to John in the hopes of shocking the boy into proper behaviour, but “the gesture angered John and, within four days, he wilfully committed an act of such nature that Dr. David McLoughlin sent him home at once.” The nature of that wilful act remains a tantalizing mystery. Although a great deal of latter correspondence referenced the scandal, no one described it in any detail, leaving the imaginations of future historians to run riot.
The tension between the two Paris-based McLoughlins appears to have been financial, namely John Jr.’s sudden extravagant spending. A casual aside, buried deep in a letter John received from his cousin John Fraser, reveals the trigger for this precipitous change. In a missive dated August 1833, Fraser relayed a bit of gossip regarding a voyageur who had recently returned from Fort Vancouver. The man had spent three years working under John McLoughlin Sr. and was telling tales of the doctor’s opulent lifestyle. Apparently the senior McLoughlin’s property was “very considerable” and everyone could see he was now “very very rich.” The story came as a shock to John, whose father had always pled poverty in his all-too-rare letters. John took the news of his family’s wealth to heart, and he began living in a style to which he felt entitled.
Once he was back in Montreal, McLoughlin’s free-spending ways continued. In the early 1800s, “La Métropole” was a city full of temptation. John began to live a little; soon after, he began to spend a lot. Bills for John’s expenses quickly piled up at the door of Simon Fraser. The first to arrive was a plea from John’s roommate for back rent totalling £30. The next was from a local confectioner, Connet of Montreal, who was owed seven piastres and one shilling, “having been deceived by him as a debt of honor.” It was a hefty bill for a bit of candy, but Connet assured Dr. Fraser that “all expenses made by your nephew at my place were for beverage and pastries and sweets.” Simon Fraser ignored these petty extortions, firm in his conviction John was no longer his problem.
Dr. John McLoughlin was too embarrassed to address his uncle directly and used his nephew John Fraser to send a back-channel apology: “I was much affected on Learning that John has so Misconducted himself that my Brother has been obliged to send him Back to your father, who certainly at this time of life ought not to be harassed with the care of other people’s Children, and what makes it Worse John is no longer a Child and his Errors are the less pardonable.”
The doctor used the same dispatch to send a second-hand message to his son: “Is Junior so destitute of feeling or have they been Destroyed by his Misconduct that he is not ashamed at his time of life after so much Money has been spent on his Education and having had the Opportunities that he has had to be unable to Earn his food and to be Indebted for his support to the Labour of Another.” Dr. McLoughlin ended his letter with a dramatic postscript: “I respect myself too much to Labour for a person who does not Respect himself.” At least one of the olive branches offered by McLoughlin Sr. reached its intended audience. John Fraser wrote to his father to share Dr. McLoughlin’s mea culpa, but it did little to soften Dr. Fraser’s heart. Tired of all the circuitous communications, Fraser took pen in hand and stabbed it directly into the heart of that most “incorrigible” man-child, John McLoughlin Jr. In a scathing communiqué, Fraser told John precisely what he thought of him: “I am convinced you are depraved beyond any hopes of reform.…I have so bad an opinion of you…you appear to me born to disgrace every being who has the misfortunate to be connected with you. If you have any the least affection for your father, mother or brothers, you will retire to some distant far country that you may never more be heard of.”
Fraser then cast dire predictions as to John’s future in the workforce: “You must know that you are illiterate to the degree that if, by any favour, you should pass an examination for a Physician you would infallibly disgrace the Profession…your invincible indolence and perverse disposition have marred your good qualities.…Your relatives would have no cause to blush for you since your head, thru want of education, is so lamentably deficient. You have nothing left besides being a day labourer in civilized society or a hunter among savages.” And with that, Simon Fraser slammed the door shut on young John McLoughlin.
Dr. McLoughlin soon joined Fraser in berating his useless son, for if sides must be chosen, he did not hesitate to pick his uncle over John. Tirades about money and John’s flagrant misuse of it became recurring themes in Dr. McLoughlin’s subsequent letters to Simon Fraser. His missives grew lumpy with complaints of his son “spending freely for a man who is Dependent on another.…Is he such a fool as to suppose that people will Engage a person…does he think that I undergo privations to Earn Money for him to spend in the Way he seems determined to do.”
Money was a major point of contention between father and son, but it soon became a bargaining chip. The first gambit was laid by John, who declared he would “go to Montreal to resume his studies if a hundred and fifty pounds [we]re given him.” Dr. McLoughlin was mortified, telling his uncle that “when he made this most impudent demand, I should have sent him at once about his Business and cast him off for ever.” Two years later, McLoughlin capitulated and tried to buy his son’s compliance. He stipulated that if John “Conducts himself as a Gentleman and if he Endeavours to the Utmost to make up for his past misconduct by applying as Zealously as he possibly can to his Studies,” he would reward him by granting him “any sum…under a hundred and fifty pounds” to complete his schooling. John, with no leverage to negotiate, accepted his father’s condition-laden offer.
Newly flush, John fully intended to resume his medical training at Montreal’s prestigious McGill University, but he needed his transcripts from Paris to secure his enrolment. He wrote to his uncle David, begging for the necessary paperwork, but John had yet to be forgiven. Time and again, David McLoughlin failed to provide the transcripts, and the delays proved costly for John, who lamented that “for my Uncle’s negligence, I have lost one year more” of study.
With no coursework to occupy him, and a false sense of financial stability courtesy of his father, John reverted to his prior lavish ways. The fool and his father’s money were soon parted, and within months his entire year’s allowance was gone. In a letter to his cousin, John admitted to having “squandered” his money and pleaded poverty. On June 15, 1835, he wrote to Simon Fraser, asking for some boots, as “It is certainly very strange that I must go barefoot. Surely you are not without any feeling of humanity. Although I have lost your friendship, it is not the reason why you should leave me go without shoes. Get the boots made in your village, if you will not trust me with the money.” Fraser’s answer was absolute silence.
John then tried his luck with his cousin John, a historically soft touch. McLoughlin asked his cousin for four or five pounds, begging, “Do not disappoint me, if you cannot send all, send at least half of it.” John Fraser acquiesced and John was soon back, looking for another handout. This time, John Fraser was not so easily shaken down. A rebuffed McLoughlin demanded to know “Who is then to pay my washing woman bill?” McLoughlin also tried guilt, telling his cousin, “I think my father himself would not have acted so. I am certain he would have clothed me.” John Fraser reluctantly agreed to forward some money for essentials.
He would soon regret his decision. Demands for expenses, all of them “essential,” poured in from his destitute cousin. August of that year saw a most peculiar request: “Will you be so kind as to purchase for me a Davier et un deschapain [tooth forceps and gum lancet] in fact a complete set of Instruments for extracting teeth.” McLoughlin justified the expenditure by saying it would allow him to “make a little money from my profession so as to enable me to continue my classes.”
By the spring of 1836, John had accumulated “such heavy debts that he was arrested by his creditors.” In his hour of need, he reached out to his father with a heartfelt plea, but the answer was not what he hoped: “John has written me a Very contrite letter But as he is spending so much More Money…I do not write him.” John McLoughlin Jr. had learned a painful lesson: the opposite of love was not hate but indifference. His father’s love was conditional, measured in pounds and pence, and doled out as sparingly.
Physically, John was the mirror image of his father, a towering man who commanded attention through sheer mass, but when it came to character, he was a paltry imitation of the great Dr. John. Unable to fill his father’s shoes, he had little choice but to follow in his footsteps. The Hudson’s Bay Company held no appeal for John and, more importantly, the elder McLoughlin had strong opposition to his son entering the fur trade. Dr. McLoughlin was “concerned about the increasingly limited prospects for men of mixed blood.” His fears were well founded and could be traced to a single source: the Company’s governor, Sir George Simpson.
As the Scottish-born head of a British monopoly, George Simpson was the quintessential colonial, believing he had been sent by God to “civilize” the indigenous population. No one, least of all Simpson, paused to consider whether those invaded needed civilization. More to the point, he abhorred change and all things foreign, but mostly he despised the people he professed to be helping.
Simpson fancied himself an anthropologist who “made it my study to examine the nature and character of Indians.” He did not like what he saw and, true to his colonial bent, he considered it his duty to impose his will upon them: “I am convinced they must be ruled with a rod of Iron to bring and keep them in a proper state of subordination, and the most certain way to effect this is by letting them feel their dependence upon us.”
The Governor’s “racist attitude toward non-whites” was as sweeping as it was pointed. He believed aboriginal education to be a complete waste of time, because “an enlightened Indian is good for nothing.” His contemporaries thought Simpson was a man “a little too much addicted to prejudices” and a little too “prone to act on them,” and his bigoted views wormed their way into the Company’s hiring policies. Sir George declared all half-breeds to be “thoughtless, dissipated and depraved.” Desperation alone necessitated the hiring of mixed-race traders for lowly posts, but it was a practice Simpson detested.
Simpson was blind to his own racist tendencies. He often flattered himself for his handling of the aboriginal peoples, saying, “They look upon me as the greatest man who ever came into the Country.” He was convinced the First Nations were stupid and gullible, easy pickings for those white men “qualified to cheat an Indian,” and he often bragged of his ability to swindle them.
Simpson’s disdain for the First Nations only increased when it came to aboriginal women. He was notoriously libidinous, engaging in a series of dalliances with women he coarsely termed his “bits of brown,” “his bit of circulating copper,” or his “Japan helpmate.”
Simpson’s pathological contempt for “half-breeds” was entirely at odds with his fervour for making them. He was a prolific sire; during his first foray into Rupert’s Land he fathered a daughter named Maria by his “washerwoman” Betsey at Fort Wedderburn, and a son named Jordie by a woman in Red River. Historian Peter C. Newman once quipped that Simpson’s title “Father of the Fur Trade” had more to do with his loins than his legacy.
Bigotry was not Simpson’s only vice, as his vanity also knew no bounds. He hired an official chronicler of his journeys into the wild, clear evidence of an ego run amok. Archibald McDonald accompanied Simpson on his earliest voyages, and Simpson got his money’s worth when the scribe immortalized him as a man of “rather imposing mien; stout, well knit frame, and of great expanse and fullness of chest, with an eye brightly blue and ever ablaze in peace or war.”
Those whose noses were not permanently imbedded in the Governor’s backside had an entirely different perspective. In his youth, Simpson was a perpetually hot-faced man, a “red-headed magpie with quivering beak and glittery eye,” but he had grown doughy as the years rolled by. His hair was once so orange it caused retinal burns, but age and neglect had reduced the remnants to a greying fringe. Sun-stroked and windswept, he bore the perennially queasy look of an ill-prepared tourist.
His clothes were equally out of step. George Simpson was a zealous adherent to the notion that clothes made the man, and so he dressed for the job he wanted: sovereign monarch. The appearance of wealth and respectability was difficult to amass and expensive to maintain, but by 1833 Simpson’s salary had climbed to a staggering £1,800 per annum (excluding expenses). He received a number of exorbitant pay raises throughout his career, and the bulk went to the care and feeding of his wardrobe. He favoured ostentation, including the requisite beaver hats (ferried about in monogrammed carrying cases) and “a gorgeous cloak of red Scottish plaid with a scarlet lining.” He was a peacock among seagulls, a preening diva strutting against a ragtag backdrop of “unsung, unlettered and uncouth” voyageurs.
As his annual tour wended through Rupert’s Land, the sight of Simpson being carried ashore by rough-and-ready Metis undoubtedly met with awe (and some laughter) at his ports of call. The mocking did not last long. The Governor’s greatest weapon was the element of surprise, and no one at the forts knew when he was coming, giving them little opportunity to put their house in order.
The unfortunates who encountered Simpson during his grand tours did what they could to warn those farther afield. It was no easy task, as the Governor had a “penchant for speed” and demanded an unholy pace, forcing his crewmen to begin rowing in the middle of the night and setting records for canoe travel that stand today. Still, the seasoned traders had their ways; news travelled quickly between forts via the “moccasin telegraph,” an informal but highly effective aboriginal gossip network.
The Governor was notoriously difficult to please and always found “little to commend and much to reform” at every outpost he visited. He never hesitated to make his displeasure known, nor did he restrict his disdain to infrastructure, for he “had the exact same complaints of many of the HBC employees he met.” His contempt for his fellows was matched only by “his caprice, his favouritism, [and] his disregard of merit,” leaving the less-favoured in his employ scrambling to keep their jobs.
From day one, Simpson made it known that the HBC was not a democracy and his edicts were final. John McLean, in his bridge-burning treatise detailing twenty-five years of servitude in the Company, claimed that Simpson wrote the minutes of his meetings before they actually took place, as the Governor’s lackeys “know better than to offer advice where none would be accepted,” and “their assent is all that is expected of them.”
Governor Simpson’s tyranny, vainglory, and irrational hatred for those of mixed race were cause enough for John McLoughlin Jr. to steer clear of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but they were far from the only reasons.