. We placed a plaque, attached to a stone from the Canadian Shield, on his grave. It replaced a leaning and fragmented wooden cross that stood as a sentinel and guardian for those many years in between. There was a religious service and remembrances.On a windy day in 1871, 16-year-old James and other young men in Orkney, Scotland, signed a five-year contract for 25 pounds to work in the fur trade as labourers, voyageurs and tradesmen for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Most would never return.
James Miller was one of the signatories, along with his brother-in-law James Naveau, of Treaty No. 9 in 1906. Just before retirement in 1917, James purchased a five-acre piece of land jutting out into Minisinakwa Lake and built a house on the edge of the newly inhabited village of Gogama. It had come into existence when the Canadian Northern Railroad was being built from Toronto to the Pacific Ocean.
They left a lot of — what we call HBC metis children , which we tried to educated and bring up to modern day civilization standards but failed miserably — factor that in your early ancestral opening of the new world !!