Hon. Donald Gunn (Canada) 1797-1878
The below is taken from pages 436 - 441 of Donald Gunn and Alastair Gunn's
Scotland and Beyond; the Families of Donald Gunn (Tormsdale) and John Gunn Strathmore and Braehour)
see http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/awgunn or http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=1026905
It is worth noting that the Hon. Donald Gunn is of the MacHamish line (the supposed 'Chief' line if you like) and has many descendants. It is again one of the many reasons why the idea that the 'Chef' line has died out is just wrong...
Scotland and Beyond; the Families of Donald Gunn (Tormsdale) and John Gunn Strathmore and Braehour)
see http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/awgunn or http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=1026905
It is worth noting that the Hon. Donald Gunn is of the MacHamish line (the supposed 'Chief' line if you like) and has many descendants. It is again one of the many reasons why the idea that the 'Chef' line has died out is just wrong...
The picture is believed to be in the public domain.
Hon. Donald Gunn (372)[1], Canada Donald Gunn[2] (September 1797–30 November 1878) was a Manitoba politician and member of the Province's Legislative Council (which he helped to abolish).
Gunn was born in Orkney, Scotland, in 1797. He worked in the Canadian North West for the Hudson's Bay Company between 1813 and 1823, and was subsequently a Judge on the Court of Petty Sessions in Red River. He also wrote for the Smithsonian Institution[3] and the Institute of Rupert's Land, and was a member of the Board of Management for Manitoba College (a Presbyterian institution).
Gunn was a supporter of Canadian Confederation and the Government of Adams George Archibald. In Manitoba's first general election (27 December 1870), he ran against Provincial Secretary and fellow Archibald-supporter Alfred Boyd. He was defeated by 58 votes to 28.
Gunn was appointed to the Province's new Legislative Council on 15 March 1871, one of seven members. In 1876, he supported the decision of the Robert A. Davis government to abolish the institution.
Donald Gunn died in 1878.
being abstracted from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Gunn
And for a fulsome, ‘Victorian phrased’, life--
SKETCH OF THE LIFE of the late HON. DONALD GUNN[4]; author presumably C.R. Tuttle
Prominently one whose scholarly instinct was of a verity a part of his nature, the author of the History of which this brief notice is a prefix, Donald Gunn, was born in the Parish of Halkirk in the County of Caithness, Scotland, in the year 1797, and sprang from that strong and fertile class of peasant farmers whose health of body and mind-nurtured in the frugal simplicity of their native hill—has furnished so many worthy sons to the stout old land that gave them birth. A land whose scant nurture and limited scope, while it conserves so much, yet breeds a necessity enriching other shores than those of the rugged peninsula stretching its rocky arm into the wild northern seas, sending out, from time to time, to the great unoccupied spaces her colonizing children, who achieve by virtue of inherent and trained qualities—that stand them ever instead—a success second to none, if equaled by any.
Of the children of the tenant of the old farm house in the strath of Braeholme, two furnish worth proof of this fact, an elder son seeking at an earl day his fortune in the wilds of Australia, becoming in due course of time one of the largest wool growers and sheep farmers in the colony: the other, the subject of our memoir, who turning his face to the west, wrought out amid the ice and snow of the northern land, not only fair fortune but an honored name.
It was in the Parish School of Halkirk that the blue-eyed, fair haired Scotch lad first mastered the mystic signs that were to prove to him in after years, such unvarying delight. Here the speech of the Hills took precedence, and the Gaelic (the tongue the Scotsmen fondly boast contains all others) found an apt and loving pupil; one who the latest years of his life knew no poet king save Ossian, no loftier flight than that of the strong wing of the early Scottish bard, whose bold imaginings conned by the boy on the mist clad heights of the tempestuous shore, resonant with the mighty music of the sea, found quick interpretation, and were framed kindred elevation, leaving a picture no time could fade.
Secondary, came the alien English—the strange classic spoken by the Southerns—that lent dignity to the little school-house, whose curriculum boasted these two alone, yet in themselves an education holding all of flexibility and power that written or spoken thought demands, an equipment, seeming slender, in reality full of pith.
Happily for the boy, the hills and valley, the storm and sunshine on the heather-clad braes, the glory and changeful lights of his mountain, sea grit home, these too were his teachers. Here following the herds, or watching the browsing, wandering sheep, he drank in a tranquil strength he little wot of, received the silent benison of nature, knitting together the robust tissues that make life a harmony, a forceful quietude, breeding strength for cheerful essay of all tasks, admirably fitted for the one that now came quickly to his youthful hand.
The Hudson's Bay Company, who had depots and shipping ports on the neighbouring islands, had long been in the habit of mainly recruiting their force of servants among the hardy, frugal people in the north of Scotland and the Orkney Isles. Their ships were the 'argosies' that freighted fortunes from the distant shores of Hudson's Bay; and their ships were to the simple youth of the coast—wearied with an unremunerative toil that held no future—the brave craft that would bear them to a better fate. The slender stipend promised seemingly, by home comparison, large indeed.
Young Donald, now some sixteen summers, urged by such thoughts, and a love of wandering that seems instinctive at a certain period of life, aware of the large number of families being sent out by the Earl of Selkirk, engaged with the local agent, and in the year of grace, 1813, found himself duly enrolled as servant of the great fur trading company, and bound for York Factory, on Hudson's Bay, in company with the Pilgrim Fathers of the North-West, now widely known as the Selkirk Settlers.[5]
The future historian will yet linger over the pages of this volume, in seeking to portray anew the story of these people. No record of colonial life is more affecting than the tearful embarkation of these cottagers, their hardships at the bay, and the culminating and dreadful distresses in which they and their helpless families were plunged on their arrival at the Red River, caused by their miserable and unexpected involvement in the deadly strife and murderous competition of the two great rival companies, their own protectors and the wild half-savage men of the "North-West"
The suffering is so real and persistent, their patience so admirable, their helpless acceptance of the most grievous situation so simple and unostentatious, that it hardly seems real; deepening our sympathy and admiration as we look upon the picture of to-day, the smiling farms of their children and descendants, where plenty and peace brood over the spot fraught to their progenitors with terror, flight and distress.
The life of a "Company man'—in the phrase of the country—is either fraught with incident or entirely uneventful, being simply a matter of locality. "The Severn District", abutting upon, "the Bay," in which Mr. Gunn passed his ten years of service, was the natural stronghold of the Hudson's Bay men, peopled by peaceful, inoffensive Indians, and productive of no marked event, while at the same time the plains to the west—as is seen in this narrative—were, with the Red River Country, the theatre of a warfare so fatal to the contestants as to impel the coalition of the great rivals, the North-West Company being merged into that of the Hudson's Bay in the year 1821.
But the time, to a man of Mr. Gunn's energetic character, and thirst for knowledge, was not—if barren of event—unprofitably spent. His vicinity to the great depot of the north, and his early promotion to the position of a lesser postmaster, threw him continually into the society of the leading men of the Company, from whose conversation he derived a great store of exact information touching the past and contemporaneous history of the great governing Corporation. He was also enabled to acquire, by loan or purchase, books, and the digest of his acquisitions at his period, as shown in conversation and reminiscences in after years, was of singular fullness and value. An immense amount of local character detail of the most unique and interesting description has by his decease, been forever lost to the lesser records of our colonial history, a loss as great to us in the future as would have been the early destruction of "Pepys’ Diary" to the English people.
The year 1819 was to Mr. Gunn alike a memorable and happy one, he then marrying Margaret, the eldest daughter of James Swain, Esquire, the officer in charge of the York District, a union blessed and fortunate in every respect—one unbroken for a period of fifty years.
That the newly married couple were in no danger of being at the time of their marriage enervated by luxury, Mr. Gunn would, with a keen recollection of the time and their freedom from care and grief, amusingly relate. In addition to the usual allowance of small stores, their outfit of meats and breadstuffs was more suggestive than real, consisting of a "flint trade gun," ammunition, and twine for nets. The hardship was but in seeming, game and fish abounded, Indian and traders alike resorted to their well stocked "preserves" for subsistence, and, possibly, the jaded epicures of the city would have envied the young couple their keen enjoyment of their woodland fare.
A deprivation more felt was at times when in recent possession of a treasured book, to be without candles or oil, when thinly split pitch pine fagots would light up the house, drag from their shadowy coverts the finest print, and convert the snug log dwelling, nestled in evergreens, into a hall of learning, where each recurring page folded down and conserved satisfactions remembered through life.
It being found inexpedient by the Hudson's Bay Company after the absorption of the North-West, to maintain so large a force as the united employees of the late Company and its own, certain reductions were determined upon, and Mr. Gunn gladly availed himself of the opportunity to retire. With his wife and newly born son, he followed his old friends, the "Selkirk Settlers," to the Red River, settling in what is now the Parish of St. Andrews, but which he and a few friends of certainly ambitious loyalty for the time, named "Little Britain,” scarce for seeing that their tiny speck of civilization would ripen so quickly, and assure here and to the west a "Greater Britain."
The locality chosen, however, proved to be a good one, and drew about it a more than usually intelligent class of "freemen," as the retired servants of the Company were called; among them Mr. William Smith, and English worthy full of strong, honest points, one of the most genial and humorous of men, who had also married a daughter of Mr. Swain, and was after appointed Secretary to the Council of Assiniboia and Clerk of the Local Courts, an office which he held until his death.
Happily for the new farmers, these were the halcyon days of the hunters. Buffalo were near and plenty, the net was ever in the water, sturgeon and "gold eyes" daily fare. Without ploughs, tools or cattle, their first attempts at agriculture were of the rudest description; putting down wheat with a hoe, the quantity of seed is not hard to surmise, yet from such a beginning ere many years—aided by his stout sons—spacious stone house with ample stabling for the large stock of horses and horned animals, and abundant grain, made the homestead of Donald Gunn one of the foremost in the entire settlement, one whose abundance made glad many a luckless soul.
After an interval of ten years spent in active farming, Mr. Gunn found himself, by the increasing size and usefulness of his large family so relieved from personal attention to the farm, that he was enabled to take charge of the Parish School established, and, with the exception of the very slight contributions of the parents, supported by the Mission Society of the English Church.
This task, one held in the highest honor and respect in those primitive days—to the shame of our own diminished and unwise estimate be it spoken—was one so congenial to his taste, that, fortunately for the youth of both sexes in his charge, it was continued without intermission by him for the long period of eighteen years.
A period of usefulness in one of the highest and most responsible functions possible to an individual, one which while training others had disciplined and fitted for distinction many of our best thinkers and actors in the world of statecraft and of letters.
This was, in the case of Mr. Gunn, very distinctly avouched, not only in the career of numbers of his pupils who attained to positions of public trust and honor, but even more certainly, if less marked, in the sustained life impress made upon all, intelligence bearing fruit by many a fireside, unseen rivulets trained to fertilize and make glad an otherwise barren field.
Had the classes in charge of Mr. Gunn been fired with the same student ardor—simple and pure love of knowledge for its own sake—as their teacher, his task, always an arduous one, would have been slight indeed. Its compensation lay in the fact that he was at least at the Centre of all literary lore in the North-West, in contact with such varied and sufficient printed erudition as made him more than content.
When, later, made custodian and librarian in his own house of the only public collection of books in the country, he was fairly environed with satisfaction, each tome a silent friend.
The spacious stone farm-house to which we have adverted, was always the hospitable home, alike of the purposeless tourist or the wandering Savant who sought its well known doors in search of special facts in the physical geography or natural history of the vast terra incognita of which the Red River settlement was the threshold.
At Donald Gunn's, the stranger found not only the warmth of a home, but an intelligence which threw light on all detail of purposed travel and entered into and discussed every them of scientific research.
The personal characteristics of Mr. Gunn were of the most engaging character. In an intercourse of nearly twenty years we fail to recall other than the most genial and unaffected cordiality to all; super added to this, his varied powers of conversation, replete with valuable matter gathered from all sources, his sense of humor lighting up old Gaelic lore, the traditions of the Viking race from whom he sprung, the rough adventures and eccentricities of the hero worthies of "the trade" the early and chequered life in the settlement, with a vein of grounded culture running through all, made him to be one of the most companionable and instructive of men.
An Elder in the Kirk for many years, Mr. Gunn's liberality of thought—in this direction—would have been marked were it not for the general charity and largest tolerance universal in the country. Latterly, when he had retired mainly from public affairs, nearly all of Mr. Gunn's time was occupied in the preparation of this history, arranging his collated facts and personal experience with such care and patience as will doubtless cause it to be—as he intended it should be—an authority upon all the matters coming under his hands. Towards the close of his life, his sight failing him, it was his greatest pleasure to have some one read aloud to him from his favorite authors, his mind retaining its force and clearness until a few hours before his death. This occurred on the last day of November, 1878, in his own house, surrounded by his family, the parting being so peaceful as to be literally falling asleep.
[1]Baptism: June 10, 1798, Halkirk, Caithness, Scotland (Source: Halkirk Christenings, Batch \#C11037-4 Ser\# 01255-1.)
Burial: Little Britain Cemetery, St. Andrews, Manitoba, Canada. (Source: (1) Headstone in Cemetery., (2) Joyce Anaka Family History Book., (3) Little Britain United Church Cemetery Transcripts.) Census: 1838, Manitoba Red River Settlement Elected: Bet. 1871 - 1876, Legislative Council (Source: Joyce Anaka Family History Book.) Immigration: June 28, 1813, Stromness, Scotland aboard the Eddystone (Source: Joyce Anaka Family History Book, page 6.) Occupation: Aft. 1822, Farmer (Source: Joyce Anaka Family History Book.) Retirement: 1822, Freeman from Hudson's Bay Company (Source: Hudson Bay Company Archives, Donald Gunn Bio Sheet.)
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Gunn reproduced under license see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
[3]Smithsonian Institution, Annual report, 1878 (Washington), 63–64. Donald Gunn, “Indian remains near Red River settlement, Hudson’s bay territory,” Smithsonian Institution, Annual report, 1867 (Washington), 399–100; “Notes of an egging expedition to Shoal lake, west of lake Winnipeg. Made under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution in 1867 . . .”
[4] Being from Donald Gunn and C. R. Tuttle, History of Manitoba from the earliest settlement to 1835 by the late Hon. Donald Gunn, and from the admission of the province into the Dominion by Charles R. Tuttle (Ottawa, 1880).
[5]Note taken from Hudson's Bay Company Archives; Donald is described in 1814-1815 as with "dark brown hair, strong, well made", but "desires to return home".
Gunn was born in Orkney, Scotland, in 1797. He worked in the Canadian North West for the Hudson's Bay Company between 1813 and 1823, and was subsequently a Judge on the Court of Petty Sessions in Red River. He also wrote for the Smithsonian Institution[3] and the Institute of Rupert's Land, and was a member of the Board of Management for Manitoba College (a Presbyterian institution).
Gunn was a supporter of Canadian Confederation and the Government of Adams George Archibald. In Manitoba's first general election (27 December 1870), he ran against Provincial Secretary and fellow Archibald-supporter Alfred Boyd. He was defeated by 58 votes to 28.
Gunn was appointed to the Province's new Legislative Council on 15 March 1871, one of seven members. In 1876, he supported the decision of the Robert A. Davis government to abolish the institution.
Donald Gunn died in 1878.
being abstracted from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Gunn
And for a fulsome, ‘Victorian phrased’, life--
SKETCH OF THE LIFE of the late HON. DONALD GUNN[4]; author presumably C.R. Tuttle
Prominently one whose scholarly instinct was of a verity a part of his nature, the author of the History of which this brief notice is a prefix, Donald Gunn, was born in the Parish of Halkirk in the County of Caithness, Scotland, in the year 1797, and sprang from that strong and fertile class of peasant farmers whose health of body and mind-nurtured in the frugal simplicity of their native hill—has furnished so many worthy sons to the stout old land that gave them birth. A land whose scant nurture and limited scope, while it conserves so much, yet breeds a necessity enriching other shores than those of the rugged peninsula stretching its rocky arm into the wild northern seas, sending out, from time to time, to the great unoccupied spaces her colonizing children, who achieve by virtue of inherent and trained qualities—that stand them ever instead—a success second to none, if equaled by any.
Of the children of the tenant of the old farm house in the strath of Braeholme, two furnish worth proof of this fact, an elder son seeking at an earl day his fortune in the wilds of Australia, becoming in due course of time one of the largest wool growers and sheep farmers in the colony: the other, the subject of our memoir, who turning his face to the west, wrought out amid the ice and snow of the northern land, not only fair fortune but an honored name.
It was in the Parish School of Halkirk that the blue-eyed, fair haired Scotch lad first mastered the mystic signs that were to prove to him in after years, such unvarying delight. Here the speech of the Hills took precedence, and the Gaelic (the tongue the Scotsmen fondly boast contains all others) found an apt and loving pupil; one who the latest years of his life knew no poet king save Ossian, no loftier flight than that of the strong wing of the early Scottish bard, whose bold imaginings conned by the boy on the mist clad heights of the tempestuous shore, resonant with the mighty music of the sea, found quick interpretation, and were framed kindred elevation, leaving a picture no time could fade.
Secondary, came the alien English—the strange classic spoken by the Southerns—that lent dignity to the little school-house, whose curriculum boasted these two alone, yet in themselves an education holding all of flexibility and power that written or spoken thought demands, an equipment, seeming slender, in reality full of pith.
Happily for the boy, the hills and valley, the storm and sunshine on the heather-clad braes, the glory and changeful lights of his mountain, sea grit home, these too were his teachers. Here following the herds, or watching the browsing, wandering sheep, he drank in a tranquil strength he little wot of, received the silent benison of nature, knitting together the robust tissues that make life a harmony, a forceful quietude, breeding strength for cheerful essay of all tasks, admirably fitted for the one that now came quickly to his youthful hand.
The Hudson's Bay Company, who had depots and shipping ports on the neighbouring islands, had long been in the habit of mainly recruiting their force of servants among the hardy, frugal people in the north of Scotland and the Orkney Isles. Their ships were the 'argosies' that freighted fortunes from the distant shores of Hudson's Bay; and their ships were to the simple youth of the coast—wearied with an unremunerative toil that held no future—the brave craft that would bear them to a better fate. The slender stipend promised seemingly, by home comparison, large indeed.
Young Donald, now some sixteen summers, urged by such thoughts, and a love of wandering that seems instinctive at a certain period of life, aware of the large number of families being sent out by the Earl of Selkirk, engaged with the local agent, and in the year of grace, 1813, found himself duly enrolled as servant of the great fur trading company, and bound for York Factory, on Hudson's Bay, in company with the Pilgrim Fathers of the North-West, now widely known as the Selkirk Settlers.[5]
The future historian will yet linger over the pages of this volume, in seeking to portray anew the story of these people. No record of colonial life is more affecting than the tearful embarkation of these cottagers, their hardships at the bay, and the culminating and dreadful distresses in which they and their helpless families were plunged on their arrival at the Red River, caused by their miserable and unexpected involvement in the deadly strife and murderous competition of the two great rival companies, their own protectors and the wild half-savage men of the "North-West"
The suffering is so real and persistent, their patience so admirable, their helpless acceptance of the most grievous situation so simple and unostentatious, that it hardly seems real; deepening our sympathy and admiration as we look upon the picture of to-day, the smiling farms of their children and descendants, where plenty and peace brood over the spot fraught to their progenitors with terror, flight and distress.
The life of a "Company man'—in the phrase of the country—is either fraught with incident or entirely uneventful, being simply a matter of locality. "The Severn District", abutting upon, "the Bay," in which Mr. Gunn passed his ten years of service, was the natural stronghold of the Hudson's Bay men, peopled by peaceful, inoffensive Indians, and productive of no marked event, while at the same time the plains to the west—as is seen in this narrative—were, with the Red River Country, the theatre of a warfare so fatal to the contestants as to impel the coalition of the great rivals, the North-West Company being merged into that of the Hudson's Bay in the year 1821.
But the time, to a man of Mr. Gunn's energetic character, and thirst for knowledge, was not—if barren of event—unprofitably spent. His vicinity to the great depot of the north, and his early promotion to the position of a lesser postmaster, threw him continually into the society of the leading men of the Company, from whose conversation he derived a great store of exact information touching the past and contemporaneous history of the great governing Corporation. He was also enabled to acquire, by loan or purchase, books, and the digest of his acquisitions at his period, as shown in conversation and reminiscences in after years, was of singular fullness and value. An immense amount of local character detail of the most unique and interesting description has by his decease, been forever lost to the lesser records of our colonial history, a loss as great to us in the future as would have been the early destruction of "Pepys’ Diary" to the English people.
The year 1819 was to Mr. Gunn alike a memorable and happy one, he then marrying Margaret, the eldest daughter of James Swain, Esquire, the officer in charge of the York District, a union blessed and fortunate in every respect—one unbroken for a period of fifty years.
That the newly married couple were in no danger of being at the time of their marriage enervated by luxury, Mr. Gunn would, with a keen recollection of the time and their freedom from care and grief, amusingly relate. In addition to the usual allowance of small stores, their outfit of meats and breadstuffs was more suggestive than real, consisting of a "flint trade gun," ammunition, and twine for nets. The hardship was but in seeming, game and fish abounded, Indian and traders alike resorted to their well stocked "preserves" for subsistence, and, possibly, the jaded epicures of the city would have envied the young couple their keen enjoyment of their woodland fare.
A deprivation more felt was at times when in recent possession of a treasured book, to be without candles or oil, when thinly split pitch pine fagots would light up the house, drag from their shadowy coverts the finest print, and convert the snug log dwelling, nestled in evergreens, into a hall of learning, where each recurring page folded down and conserved satisfactions remembered through life.
It being found inexpedient by the Hudson's Bay Company after the absorption of the North-West, to maintain so large a force as the united employees of the late Company and its own, certain reductions were determined upon, and Mr. Gunn gladly availed himself of the opportunity to retire. With his wife and newly born son, he followed his old friends, the "Selkirk Settlers," to the Red River, settling in what is now the Parish of St. Andrews, but which he and a few friends of certainly ambitious loyalty for the time, named "Little Britain,” scarce for seeing that their tiny speck of civilization would ripen so quickly, and assure here and to the west a "Greater Britain."
The locality chosen, however, proved to be a good one, and drew about it a more than usually intelligent class of "freemen," as the retired servants of the Company were called; among them Mr. William Smith, and English worthy full of strong, honest points, one of the most genial and humorous of men, who had also married a daughter of Mr. Swain, and was after appointed Secretary to the Council of Assiniboia and Clerk of the Local Courts, an office which he held until his death.
Happily for the new farmers, these were the halcyon days of the hunters. Buffalo were near and plenty, the net was ever in the water, sturgeon and "gold eyes" daily fare. Without ploughs, tools or cattle, their first attempts at agriculture were of the rudest description; putting down wheat with a hoe, the quantity of seed is not hard to surmise, yet from such a beginning ere many years—aided by his stout sons—spacious stone house with ample stabling for the large stock of horses and horned animals, and abundant grain, made the homestead of Donald Gunn one of the foremost in the entire settlement, one whose abundance made glad many a luckless soul.
After an interval of ten years spent in active farming, Mr. Gunn found himself, by the increasing size and usefulness of his large family so relieved from personal attention to the farm, that he was enabled to take charge of the Parish School established, and, with the exception of the very slight contributions of the parents, supported by the Mission Society of the English Church.
This task, one held in the highest honor and respect in those primitive days—to the shame of our own diminished and unwise estimate be it spoken—was one so congenial to his taste, that, fortunately for the youth of both sexes in his charge, it was continued without intermission by him for the long period of eighteen years.
A period of usefulness in one of the highest and most responsible functions possible to an individual, one which while training others had disciplined and fitted for distinction many of our best thinkers and actors in the world of statecraft and of letters.
This was, in the case of Mr. Gunn, very distinctly avouched, not only in the career of numbers of his pupils who attained to positions of public trust and honor, but even more certainly, if less marked, in the sustained life impress made upon all, intelligence bearing fruit by many a fireside, unseen rivulets trained to fertilize and make glad an otherwise barren field.
Had the classes in charge of Mr. Gunn been fired with the same student ardor—simple and pure love of knowledge for its own sake—as their teacher, his task, always an arduous one, would have been slight indeed. Its compensation lay in the fact that he was at least at the Centre of all literary lore in the North-West, in contact with such varied and sufficient printed erudition as made him more than content.
When, later, made custodian and librarian in his own house of the only public collection of books in the country, he was fairly environed with satisfaction, each tome a silent friend.
The spacious stone farm-house to which we have adverted, was always the hospitable home, alike of the purposeless tourist or the wandering Savant who sought its well known doors in search of special facts in the physical geography or natural history of the vast terra incognita of which the Red River settlement was the threshold.
At Donald Gunn's, the stranger found not only the warmth of a home, but an intelligence which threw light on all detail of purposed travel and entered into and discussed every them of scientific research.
The personal characteristics of Mr. Gunn were of the most engaging character. In an intercourse of nearly twenty years we fail to recall other than the most genial and unaffected cordiality to all; super added to this, his varied powers of conversation, replete with valuable matter gathered from all sources, his sense of humor lighting up old Gaelic lore, the traditions of the Viking race from whom he sprung, the rough adventures and eccentricities of the hero worthies of "the trade" the early and chequered life in the settlement, with a vein of grounded culture running through all, made him to be one of the most companionable and instructive of men.
An Elder in the Kirk for many years, Mr. Gunn's liberality of thought—in this direction—would have been marked were it not for the general charity and largest tolerance universal in the country. Latterly, when he had retired mainly from public affairs, nearly all of Mr. Gunn's time was occupied in the preparation of this history, arranging his collated facts and personal experience with such care and patience as will doubtless cause it to be—as he intended it should be—an authority upon all the matters coming under his hands. Towards the close of his life, his sight failing him, it was his greatest pleasure to have some one read aloud to him from his favorite authors, his mind retaining its force and clearness until a few hours before his death. This occurred on the last day of November, 1878, in his own house, surrounded by his family, the parting being so peaceful as to be literally falling asleep.
[1]Baptism: June 10, 1798, Halkirk, Caithness, Scotland (Source: Halkirk Christenings, Batch \#C11037-4 Ser\# 01255-1.)
Burial: Little Britain Cemetery, St. Andrews, Manitoba, Canada. (Source: (1) Headstone in Cemetery., (2) Joyce Anaka Family History Book., (3) Little Britain United Church Cemetery Transcripts.) Census: 1838, Manitoba Red River Settlement Elected: Bet. 1871 - 1876, Legislative Council (Source: Joyce Anaka Family History Book.) Immigration: June 28, 1813, Stromness, Scotland aboard the Eddystone (Source: Joyce Anaka Family History Book, page 6.) Occupation: Aft. 1822, Farmer (Source: Joyce Anaka Family History Book.) Retirement: 1822, Freeman from Hudson's Bay Company (Source: Hudson Bay Company Archives, Donald Gunn Bio Sheet.)
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Gunn reproduced under license see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
[3]Smithsonian Institution, Annual report, 1878 (Washington), 63–64. Donald Gunn, “Indian remains near Red River settlement, Hudson’s bay territory,” Smithsonian Institution, Annual report, 1867 (Washington), 399–100; “Notes of an egging expedition to Shoal lake, west of lake Winnipeg. Made under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution in 1867 . . .”
[4] Being from Donald Gunn and C. R. Tuttle, History of Manitoba from the earliest settlement to 1835 by the late Hon. Donald Gunn, and from the admission of the province into the Dominion by Charles R. Tuttle (Ottawa, 1880).
[5]Note taken from Hudson's Bay Company Archives; Donald is described in 1814-1815 as with "dark brown hair, strong, well made", but "desires to return home".