Owen Charles Beardmore had a short-lived career with the Hudson’s Bay Company as a
service clerk.
1 After being stationed in Montreal in 1846, he was transferred to Temiskaming and
eventually to
Fort Rupert where he stayed until his dismissal in 1851.
2Beardmore was to be second in command to
George Blenkinsop at
Fort Rupert while
Captain W. H. McNeill was away, but ran into difficulties with his superiors because of his penchant for
finding faults in others and comparing his education with them.
3Perhaps his most noteworthy experience was his involvement in the investigation of
a murder of three sailors who deserted near the Fort: apparently,
Blenkinsop ordered a group of local Indigenous men, likely from the Kwaguʼł Tribe, to return
the men
dead or alive.
4 This incident would evolve into a complex and dramatic court-case in which Beardmore
would give testimony, which
Pelly mentions in
this letter to
Grey.
Beardmore was dismissed from HBC service in 1851 and moved to Australia, where he
successfully owned and ran a sheep ranch.5
- 1. BC Metis Mapping Resarch Project, HBC employee 1848-1851, Metis Nation British Columbia, 172.
- 2. Ibid.
- 3. Ibid.
- 4. Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. 32, History of British Columbia 1792-1887 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1887), 273.
- 5. J. S. Helmcken, ed. D. B. Smith, The Reminiscence of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken (UBC Press, 1975), 319.