The North American fur trade is a central focus for ethnohistorical scholarship in Canada. In his new monograph on a familiar topic, Daniel Robert Laxer argues that “by listening, we can better understand the fur trade’s social dynamics and cultural contours” (22). Naturally, the sounds of the fur trade were for the most part ephemeral; we cannot hear the past as it really was. Despite this, Laxer demonstrates how scholars may still profitably attune themselves to the traces of these sonic histories.
Chapters in Listening to the Fur Trade focus on key elements of the soundscapes attested by British fur traders in the heyday of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Sounds produced by gunpowder, firearms, and military instruments (chapters 1 and 3), during cultural and diplomatic exchanges inside and outside the trading posts (chapters 2, 4, and 8), and by human and nonhuman agents on the journey from the Saint Lawrence...
