Yukon who is who

James Green Stewart (1825 – 1881)

James Stewart was the son of the Honourable John Stewart, member of the Executive Council of Lower Canada, and Eliza Maria Green. He was appointed an apprentice clerk in the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1844 and, after a year near Lake Superior, was posted to the Mackenzie River District. He was Robert Campbell’s assistant at Fort Selkirk from 1848 to 1852. .¹⁾

Vital supplies from Fort Simpson failed to arrive at Fort Frances in 1849 and Stewart, who had travelled to collect them, barely survived the trip back to Fort Selkirk. He volunteered to take the extremely dangerous 1,000-mile trip to Fort Simpson in April 1850, and on the way rescued the trader at [Fort Frances], a survivor of starvation, cannibalism, and fire. Stewart gathered a boatload of supplies at Fort Simpson and returned to Selkirk and Campbell’s praise for his efforts.²⁾

In 1852, Stewart was sent to Fort Yukon, downriver on the Yukon River, to retrieve a cow and a load of supplies. While he was there, the HBC was expelled from Fort Selkirk by coastal Tlingit traders. Stewart briefly took over operations at Fort McPherson in 1954, was posted briefly to Fort Carlton, Saskatchewan, and then was ordered to Fort Resolution, NWT. He was part of an aborted expedition to find the lost Franklin expedition in 1855. He served at Cumberland House, Saskatchewan from 1856 to 1862, at Oxford House, Manitoba from 1865 to 1867 and at Norway House from 1867 to 1871. His best years were in the Yukon, where Robert Campbell named the Stewart River in his honour.³⁾