Notes

The story of Reverend James Evans, an English Methodist missionary, is one of great perseverance and ingenuity and must be one of the most compelling stories in the history of Canada.

Evans arrived in Norway House in April of 1840, located approximately 300 miles north of Winnipeg. Primarily a trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Norway House was remote and difficult to access; getting in supplies and type for a printing press was seemingly impossible. Evans had no choice but to employ the resources within his reach. He acquired tea chests from the fur traders who sold large quantities of tea to the Indigenous peoples. Using the thin sheets of lead that lined these chests, he managed to manufacture his type. He carefully carved out little models of his characters in oak and then made casts of them in soft clay. Melted lead was poured into the clay molds, and after many failures, he succeeded in producing type that was sufficient for his purposes. He made his ink out of chimney soot mixed with sturgeon oil. Lacking paper, he employed birch bark as a substitute. He even devised his own printing press by adapting a jack screw, used by the traders for packing furs into bales. This gave him the necessary pressure to make an inked impression, and with these simplest of tools, he began the collaborative work of furnishing the Indigenous peoples with samples of scripture and hymns printed in their own language.

Evans often clashed with the Hudson’s Bay Company, mostly over their treatment of the indigenous peoples. The Hudson’s Bay Company even went so far as to accuse him of sexual misconduct with the indigenous girls under his care. This was later proven to be an attempt to discredit and incarcerate him. He was acquitted but he had to go to London to defend himself and while there he died of a heart attack in 1846 and was buried there, but his remains were cremated and sent back to Norway House.

Cree Syllabics

While later historians have credited Evans with the creation of syllabics, the characters he cast in lead to capture the Cree language in print, recently the question of who actually created the system of written syllabic symbols has come under close scrutiny and doubts have been raised as to Evans’s role. Oral tradition holds that it was a Cree who gave the syllabics to his people on a piece of birch bark. There were also two Cree linguists working with Evans at Norway House, and it is highly probable that they would have collaborated in developing syllabics.

A more in-depth look at the creation of the Cree syllabics can be found at CBC.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/a-question-of-legacy-cree-writing-and-the-origin-of-the-syllabics

References:

Gerald M. Hutchinson, “EVANS, JAMES,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 7, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed July 27, 2024, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/evans_james_7E.html.

Toronto Public Libraries. Canadian Book of Printing: How Printing Came to Canada and the Story of the Graphic Arts, Told Mainly in Pictures. Toronto Public Libraries, 1940.