I picked up a Biblio Life reprint of this 1910 publication the other day. It is an interesting little booklet for anyone studying the settlers of the pre-1915 desertions. Essentially, it consists of copies of documents in the Selkirk Papers that help to identify exactly which people arrived as settlers in the 1811, 1812, 1813 and 1814 groups.

I wrote about Donald Gunn and his egging expedition for the Smithsonian a couple of weeks ago. I mentioned in the first entry that someone had requested a copy of his book History of Manitoba from the Earliest Settlement to 1835. As I didn’t have the book in my own Red River collection, I decided I’d like to obtain a copy.

Subtitled The Life Story of Peter Rindisbacher, this book was written as a supplement to the 1970 art exhibition of the same name. As a consequence, it is not very long, but it is filled with information of an often overlooked group of original Selkirk Settlers, the Swiss of 1821.

Again, I return to the AGM at the end of September this year. The newly elected Vice President of TLSARL, Roy McLeod, stopped me as I was entering the venue. He’d found some articles written by my great-aunt in a couple of old copies of Saskatchewan History, and kindly, he gave them to me. Imagine my excitement when I found her contributions were (an annotated copy of) a journal her aunt kept while on a canoe trip made in the 1920s!

At the Annual Reunion in September, someone who found out that I was a used book dealer asked me about locating a book by Donald Gunn for them, History of Manitoba. Published in 1880 and long out of print, this is a scarce book and difficult to find in the original edition. A 2009 reprint by Cornell University Library is also in short supply.

by Elizabeth Campbell

I just recently finished reading this little gem of a book. I’ve had it tucked away on my bookshelf for years. About a year ago, a TLSARL friend sent me a URL that led me to a site where I could read it online if I cared to, and his thoughtfulness reminded me that mine was buried somewhere. I dug it out, but still didn’t read it for some time.

The snail-mailed copies of the August Newsletters have been mailed, and most of you will have had a

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chance to read it by now.  In it (and in the June issue) was an article concerning J. M. Bumsted’s latest book, Lord Selkirk: a Life.