Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear (Dodo Press) Paperback – Import, 8 May 2009

There is Nothing better than first hand accounts of historic events. Theresa lays out the events of this part of the Riel Rebellion from the unwilling participants view. She saw her husband and other unarmed men shot down before her eyes, was taken captive and held prisoner in the Indian camp. She has bitter comments about the Indians, but can be forgiven when one understands she has just lost her husband to their bullets. At the same time, she clearly sees the different sub groups within the Indian and metis camp, praises some and thanks other for keeping her safe within the camp. She endures 2 months, much of the time in the elements, In only the clothes she is captured in (which are reduced to rags) during the spring of the year. No coat, no hat, little food, often moving with the camp, shivering herself to sleep, when she did sleep, under constant watch up until she escaped. Quite a feat for a white woman of that day and she can consider herself a frontiersman for having gone west and then adapted to what fate brought her. The hardy Indian woman of course were raise with this life and none were hardier then them. In the last half of her book, she reflects on the Hudson’s Bay Compamy, the Government, the Rebelliers and the Churches, all striving to influence the Indians and metis to meet their own alterior motives. Her point view is interesting in that it reflects the early “we need to civilize these Injins” thought pattern that leads up to these current days of truth and reconciliation with the First Nations, yet she compliments many for there politeness, pietie, friendlyness and selflessness. I found the book to be a good read; a much more enlivened account than we usually read from stark historians.

These concise, well-written accounts, are some of the lost "gems" of Canadian history.