Peter Fidler Facts

PETER FIDLER FACTS

  • David Thompson was designated to go with Hudson's Bay chief surveyor Philip Turnor's expedition in 1790 to determine the exact location of and the best route to Lake Athabasca. A serious leg injury kept David Thompson behind. His place was taken by rookie surveyor Peter Fidler, who later succeeded Turnor as Inland Surveyor.
  • It was on this, his first expedition into Northern Alberta that Peter Fidler began to learn the Chipewyan language.
  • In 1792, when William Tomlison came up the North Saskatchewan River to establish Buckingham House beside the North West Company's Fort George, Peter Fidler was the accompanying surveyor.
  •  In the late winter of 1992, Peter Fidler and few companions headed south on a surveying expedition that took him all the way down to Waterton National Park where he was the first European to make a recorded observation of Chief Mountain in early January of 1793.
  • Surveying information from that trip was used by Aaron Arrowsmith, a British map maker, in his first map of North America in 1795.
  • In Arrowsmith's 1802 revision of the map of North America, he delineated the length of the Missouri River. The information concerning the Missouri headwaters, came from Peter Fidler's drawing of a map by the Blackfoot Indian Ac Ko Mo Ki.
  • Peter Fidler loved clothes and often commented in his journals when he had new 'togs' made.
  • On October 19, 1801, the tailor at Chesterfield House made 'a fine blue cloth coat' for Fidler, and on October 26, he made Fidler a 'pair of yellow trousers'.
  • On December 24, Fidler had the tailor make him a waistcoat.
  •  January 27, 1802, Fidler had 'the Taylor making me a red Coat'.
  • On February 15, 1802 the tailor made yet another waistcoat for him.
  • On July 8, 1813, Fidler's cassette contained a total of 24 waistcoats.