The Writings of David Thompson, Volume 3

Donald Wright speaks with Bill Moreau about his book The Writings of David Thompson, Volume 3: From the Northwest to Montreal, Selected Letters and Contributions to Newspapers, published by the Champlain Society in 2025.

David Thompson is one of the touchstone figures in the early history of Canada, and is celebrated for his distinguished fur trade career with the Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company. But Thompson’s life after he retired from this career in 1812 is less well known. The forty-five years of Thompson’s post-fur trade life, spent largely in Glengarry County and Montreal, were as dramatic and historically relevant in their own way as his years in the West: his family grew, his financial fortunes waxed and then devastatingly waned, and his work as a surveyor took him from the St. Lawrence to Lake of the Woods, to the Eastern Townships, Muskoka, and New York City.

Volume 3 of the Writings of David Thompson gives us a deeper appreciation of the full life of this fascinating figure. Made up of professional and personal letters, and contributions to Montreal newspapers, this volume follows Thompson through all the stages of his life, beginning with his years with the HBC and NWC, continuing through an active middle period as a Glengarry landowner and international boundary surveyor, and then into later life as venerable contributor to public debates and supplicant for pension and patronage. As we read through Thompson’s letters, addressed to fur trade colleagues, boundary commission officials, colonial administrators, British and American cabinet member and personal friends, his life and times come into vivid focus. This volume nicely complements Thompson’s Travels, the work that is the subject of Volumes I and II, and is marked by the same incisive mind, intellectual breadth, reflectiveness, and literary skill that characterize that great narrative.

Bill Moreau is the editor of the three-volume Writings of David Thompson, the final volume of which was published last fall by the Champlain Society. Bill lives with his family in Vaughan, Ontario, and teaches Grade 5 at Dunlace Public School in North York

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