Hello- Hope those in Orkney are dug out of the storm. Here's more from an old magazine I've been reading- from an article titled " ' A parcel of Upsstart Scotchman' ", The Beaver magazine, (Feb/Mar 1988)by Jennifer SH Brown : " An early HBC governor at Fort York, John Nixon, complained in his report of 1682 that these urban English hands not only kept trying to sue for higher wages; they also brought with them the licentiousness & liquor problems of city life. Nixon urged his London board of directors to turn to rural areas for emplyees who were ' not debauched with the voluptwousness (sic) of the city'. Specifically he suggested that they ' send over yearley 5 lykly country lads of 17 or 18 years of age, and let their tyms be 7 years so that before their tyms be out they will be lusty youngemen and fit for your service both at sea, and land, and at small wages'. Then he presented another seminal idea. He knew a man, he told his superiors, who could ' informe youre honoures how you may get men out of Scotland'. For he added, ' If England can not furnish you with men, Scotland can, for that countrie is ahard country to live in, and poor-mens wages is cheap, they are hardy people both to endure hunger, and could, and are subject to obedience, and I am sure they will serve for 6 pound pr. years, and be better content, with their dyet than Englishmen.' Nixon's recommendation must have come to receptive minds, for when the London Committee met to hire new hands in March of 1683, 4 of 7 recruits were Scots; and 3 of these indeed accepted employment at an initial 6 pounds a year. By the 1690s, French-British military conflicts were causing manpower shortages in England, and in 1693, as a consequence, the Company was seeking about a dozen able Scotsman aged between 20 & 30. HBC ships by 1700 had formed the habit of picking up last minute supplies from Stromness in the Orkney Islands before starting across the Atlantic. In 1702 the Company was instructed to hire 10 or 12 young men for the Bay on its stop there. Such hiring soon became customary, and the Company later employed an agent in Stromness to assist in its recruiting of Orkneymen. The seeming success of the policy is suggested by the fact that, by 1799, over 3/4 of HBC servants at the Bay posts were from the Orkneys. (sic)... Regular HBC wages, received over a period of years in a locality such as northern Canada where there are few temptations to overspend them, allowed many an Orcadian to return home after service in relative opulence. The Company also provided chances for upward mobility within its ranks beyond what the islanders' society could offer...some moved into positions of responsibility as officers, as did William Tomison...William Sinclair, and several others. They also brought valuable practical skills with them. A basic literacy, adequate for simple record-keeping, was not uncommon among them, thanks to the Orkney parish schools. And they had often grown up to be experienced with boats and fishing. Their knowledge of boats and boat-building was instrumental in leading the Company to invest substantially in the construction of capacious oar-powered boats for use on the larger waterways...These distinctive vessels, later known as York boats because of their use on transport routes to York Factory, were certainly based on Orkney-Norse prototypes, with their pointed bows and sterns, their rows of oarsmen, and their use of masts and square sail where water and wind conditions allowed. They compared closely to the small vessels of a thousand years ago that archaelogists have recently been recovering from Danish coastal waters; restored examples of the latter in the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde near Copenhagen clearly share the! same tradition. Several observers found the Orkney character conducive to Company business success. Being far from urban centres, Orkneymen had not learned ' the ways and debaucheries of the town' ; so said Joseph Myatt at Albany in 1727, bearing out John Nixon's remarks on ' country lads' in 1682 Edward Umfreville, former HBC employee, put on record in 1790 one of the more vivid descriptions of the Orkney servants, commenting, as an Englishman, on how they carried their 'Scotch' business conduct almost to excess: ' a a close prudent quiet people, strictly faithful to their employers, and sordidly avarious. When these people are scattered among the Indians their behaviour is conducted with so much propriety, as not only to make themselves esteemed by the natives, and to procure their protection, but they also employ their time in endeavouring to enrich themselves, and their principals, by their diligence and unwearied assiduity.' By the late 1700s, the Orkneymen were conspicuous as a distintive ethnic group, and subject to sterotyping and pre-judging by others who saw them as such...They already had, of course, kinship and friendship ties and a shared culture befoire they left home. But once placed amongst Englishmen, a sprinkling of mainland Scots, and Indian bands, and exposed increasingly to contacts with Montreal traders, they certainly became more ' tribal ' themselves- aware of their distinctiveness and of their common interests as a group. Indeed, some of them began at times to act collectively with economic motives. At York Factory in 1777, there was a report that several Orcadians had entered into ' a kind of Combination' to sue for higher wages. In 1811, Governor William Auld observed that the Orkneymen were ' never to be complained against except in cases where a great number of them happen to have their contracts expiring at the same time then they unite to reduce us to their terms! .' " Apologies to those for whom this is old hat- and wondering if anyone can comment on the 'authenticity' of Audrey Thomas' wonderful novel "Isobel Gunn", the story of an Orkney woman who disguises herself as a man and goes to work for the HBC . cheers Thompson