The Doctor's Secret Journal

A surgeon’s mate keeps a candid journal of life at a remote frontier fort, recording daily routines, cramped and poorly built housing, and the seasonal bustle of the fur trade. The narrative lays out sharp social divisions between officers and resident traders on one hand and French habitants, mixed‑heritage residents, and local Indigenous visitors on the other, and it describes frequent violence, lawlessness, and petty rivalries among the garrison. Personal grievances, a few moral interventions, and episodes such as a domestic scandal and resulting trial appear alongside observations about military weakness and the fort’s strategic and commercial roles, delivered in an often blunt, ironically comic voice.