At the age of sixteen, Ernest Lamarque travelled from England to North
America, to begin a life as a Victorian adventurer. Born in 1879 and
orphaned at age twelve, he would go on to become an artist, a writer and
a surveyor, creating some of the earliest visual records of the people
of remote regions of Canada. At seventeen, Lamarque started working as a
clerk at Hudson's Bay Company posts in Saskatchewan, Alberta, British
Columbia and the Northwest Territories. He recorded his adventures
through paintings, sketches and photographs, which would later become
invaluable historical resources - the artwork and photography he created
during his three years at the Ile-a-la-Crosse district, for example, are
among the earliest visual records of the Metis of the area. As one of
British Columbia's best-known surveyors, he located a route across
northern BC during the Bedaux Expedition. He also travelled along and
photographed the historic First Nations Davie Trail as part of his work
on the location of the initial Alaska Highway. In 1914, Lamarque
participated in the important D.A. Thomas coal transportation survey in
northern Alberta that was halted by the start of World War I. THE
LANDSCAPE OF ERNEST LAMARQUE reveals remote regions of western Canada
and its people and places through the eyes of a self-taught man.
Utilizing unpublished artwork, photographs and written accounts, author
Jay Sherwood tells the story of Lamarque's varied, unusual and
interesting life.
