One of my favourite places in all the world is the Rocky Mountain Trench in the East Kootenay region of B.C. Linda and I grew up and lived there until we fell in love and were married 45 years ago. One of the most beautiful places in the Rocky Mountain Trench is Lake Windermere.
Recently, as I was listening to Roy MacGregor being interviewed on CBC Radio about his book Canoe Country: The Making of Canada, I was reminded of this place and one of the great Canadian love stories that is commemorated there.
On the northwestern shore of Lake Windermere is the village of Invermere, formally known in the days of the fur trade as Kootenay House. In Invermere there is a very unique statue. It is a likeness of David Thompson (1770-1857), one of the most underappreciated but arguably one of the most important early explorers of Canada. There are not many statues to David Thompson in this country (notwithstanding the one at Lac la Biche).
What makes it even more unique is that standing beside him is a statue of his wife, Charlotte Small. Of all the statuary of the famous early indigenous chiefs, white explorers and other founders of Canada, apparently there is only one that includes the spouse, adding doubly to the statue’s uniqueness. But to my mind, what makes this statue even more inimitable is the love story that it represents.
Charlotte Small was an indigenous woman of Cree and Scottish ancestry. When just five years old, Charlotte, her two siblings and her Cree mother were abandoned by her fur-trading Scottish father when he returned to England. She was raised as a Cree woman by her mother. She met and married David Thompson on June 10, 1779 at Île-à-la-Crosse in what is now northern Saskatchewan, according to the customs of the Cree people. He was 29 and she was only 13 years old. Theirs is a love story that is unique and touching in Canadian history. At a time when the commonly accepted practice for white fur traders and explorers was to abandon their indigenous “country wives” just as soon as they could make their way back to civilization, from the very beginning David and Charlotte were smitten with love and totally committed to one another for life.
David Thompson often referred to Charlotte as his “lovely wife” and “his great advantage” in his detailed journals. This tiny, wiry, black-eyed indigenous woman, barely one-and-a-half metres tall, accompanied him on many of his rugged exploring and map-making journeys with children and babies in tow. She wintered with him in many of the rudimentary western trading posts that he established. She climbed the rugged Rocky Mountain passes, paddled the perilous river waters and rode the dangerous mountain trails through Canada’s western wilderness with him. From the turn of the century until 1812, Charlotte and David travelled more than 20,000 kilometres together, exploring and mapping much of western Canada. She was the translator of indigenous languages and customs for him. She was often the difference between life and death as she used her many wilderness survival skills to care for and feed him in the wild. She bore him five children in the frontier and later moved with him to Montreal where she was baptized in St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church together with the children. Over time, this devout couple had eight more children for a total of 13.
Charlotte was always David Thompson’s strongest advocate through his varied and exceptional career, even when they fell on extremely hard times. When he died on the 10th of February in 1887 in Montreal, broken, penniless and underappreciated, without any recognition at the age of 87, Charlotte his love was still by his side. And when he was laid to rest in Mount Royal Cemetery she threw herself on his grave and remained there through the whole winter’s night. She died three months later on May 4th at the age of 71 and was interred beside him. Their marriage lasted 58 years, apparently the longest union in the Canadas up to that time and one that helped define a nation. Charlotte’s life’s story in the wilderness with David Thompson is fascinatingly told by Leanne Playter in Moccasin Miles: The Travels of Charlotte Small, 1799-1812. (See experiencemountainparks.com/charlotte-small-woman-of-historic-significance.)
It’s February, the month of valentines and love stories, stories that I am always a sucker for. It’s not just that I am a hopeless romantic, and I am certainly that, but it is the commitment in these love stories that intrigues me. At one point whilst crossing Howse Pass in the Rockies in 1807, Thompson wrote in his journal: “The water descending in innumerable Rills, soon swelled our Brook to a Rivulet, with a Current foaming white, the Horses with Difficulty crossed & recrossed at every two or 300 yards, & the Men crossed by clinging to the Tails & Manes of the Horses, & yet ran no small danger of being swept away & drowned.” What Thompson does not write is that Charlotte is part of that expedition making these same perilous river crossings—and she has three infant children under her wing. If that is not enough to knock the shine off any romance I don’t know what is. But Charlotte stuck to him like glue, and he to her. That’s what intrigues me—love that sticks, love like a hacking cough, love that gets a hold and will never let go.
When I think about God’s love for me, that is the kind of love I think of. In the Bible, God’s love for His people is often described like this. One of my favourite examples is from Isaiah. The prophet contemplates the defeated and desolate Zion questioning the love of God, feeling forgotten and forsaken by God. God speaks to Zion through the prophet saying, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me” (Isaiah 49:15–16).
When I think of Jesus the Christ, I think of God’s love for me like that, love that is engraved in the palm of the hand, a persistent nail-scarred tattoo. It reminds me that in the greatest love story ever told, the love story that is God and me, God’s love is written in blood. It is love that will never let go.
