We spent a great day with Guy Vadeboncoeur at the Stewart Museum in Montreal.  He showed us the exhibits related to the Battle of Hudson Bay and even the signature of Pierre Le Moyne D’Iberville (he was a witness at a wedding).  The Stewart Museum has a great collection of maps also and if you are interested in cartography and how maps have evolved over the past 500 years.

We also stopped by the house and warehouse owned by Pierre’s father.  It was located just upstream for the rapids (“Lachine”) on the St. Lawrence River.  It was the place that they received all the furs coming to the coast from the continent.  We could imagine the large canoes pulled up on the shore with the Voyageurs carrying the furs into the warehouse.

We then visited the Macdonald Stewart Foundation and met Bruce Bolton and Eliot Perrin.  They gave us very detailed information on The Pelican.  The Macdonald Stewart Foundation is very active in supporting historical and educational activities in Canada.  Both the Foundation and the Museum work to create organizations, events and exhibits that are interactive and bring history to life.  The Fara Heim team thanks both groups for their time.

We now have a hovercraft for use on the Hudson Bay expedition.  Being able to float over the tidal flats will make searching much easier.

The team visited Montreal to meet with some Battle of Hudson Bay experts.

We first met with the Director of the Stewart Museum, Guy Vadeboncoeur.  He was a great resource and showed us a wedding document signed by Pierre Le Moyne D’Iberville as a witness.  We then visited the Stewart Foundation and spent the afternoon with Eliot Perrin.  Eliot gave us access to their Pelican documents and we have a wealth of information on the size of the ship and what it was outfitted with (especially the size and number of cannon).

We then stopped by a house and warehouse on the St. Lawrence River that was built by Pierre’s father and used as a fur trading post and warehouse.  It is just upstream from the start of the rapids (Lachine) that stopped all larger boats going up the river.  It was easy to imagine Pierre and his father standing on the shores of the river in the 1690s watching canoes laden with furs pull up to the shore.  We could also understand why York Factory and the control of Hudson Bay was important as it was a much shorter trip via ocean going sailboat to pick up the furs.  It is a long row by canoe to Chicago from Montreal.

Using the new 35′ Pearson sailboat that was just put into the water at Gimli on June 23rd the Fara Heim team will sail up to Berens River to search for suspected mooring stones found by Evald Hansen in 1955.  The team has a letter from Evald to Hjalmar Holand dated October 10th, 1956 in which he tells Hjalmar of the location.

Hjalmar writes about Evald in a book written in 1962 called “A Pre-Columbian Crusade to America”.  In it Hjalmar refers to a 1957 correspondence with Evald and then discusses mooring stones at Berens River and a spot at Leaf River Point that was called “White Men’s Writing on the Rock”. Hjalmar says he would like to go back but can’t due to “lack of travel expenses”.

We have reached out to the family of Evald and will shortly know exactly where to go.  We may not make it over to Leaf River Point as we don’t have an exact location for the “Rock”.

A full report will be published once we come back and we will be filming the expedition.