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Orkney Lad (The): The Story of Isabel Gunn

The story of Isabel Gunn – Orkney lass, Hudson’s Bay Company labourer and “debauched” cross-dresser – has been a dusty footnote in Canada’s fur trade history. In 1807, “John Fubbister” forever changed our image of Canada as a place explored by adventurous European men braving an unforgiving wilderness when, according to witnesses, he “lay down on the hearth and proceeded to give birth to a son.” Fubbister was Isabel Gunn, a poor lass with a vagrant heart who risked everything when she swapped her skirts for trousers and sailed west to Hudson Bay.