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July/August 2007 issue	IN THIS ISSUE: Table of Contents Feature: Tintina Trench Feature: Travels with Charlotte Feature: Savannah plains Feature: John Acorn The Inside Story Editor's Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

June 10, 1799.
This day married Charlotte Small.

Clipped and enigmatic, this sentence follows the style that explorer David Thompson practised in his furtrade diaries: economical and descriptive rather than interpretive. It does not ring with joy so much as declare a fact. Yet 150 years after his death and 200 years after his historic first crossing of the Rockies, even sotto voce, the statement glows with a light all its own. "This day"- and is there a hesitation, a lift to the words? - "married Charlotte Small."

It acknowledges that Thompson, who surveyed and traded furs in the Canadian West, from Hudson Bay to the Pacific coast, was more than Canada's most accomplished map-maker. He becomes, suddenly, human, capable of longing and loneliness, capable of love. Charlotte Small.

We know so little about Charlotte Small that it is tempting to invent. We imagine her a beauty. We attribute to her, wisdom and devotedness. We construct between Thompson and Small a patient and loving partnership. For all their relative silence, they become the model couple of the great Canadian romance. The fur trader and the Cree woman together symbolize all that we imagine for a secret history of Canada.

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