Beardmore, Owen Charles Joseph

Born in England, Beardmore travelled from London to Montreal to take up a post as an apprentice clerk at Fort Temiskaming in 1846. In 1849 he was transferred to Fort Rupert where he served as an apprentice clerk at the company's coal mine. In 1850, he was promoted to Clerk at Fort Rupert, where he put in a turbulent year among an unfamiliar, and occasionally hostile, native population, a mutinous ship's crew and a collection of disgruntled miners where respect for British authority was minimal. Apparently James Douglas held Beardmore responsible for much of the unrest at Fort Rupert which culminated in the death of three deserters and the destruction of two native villages and in 1851 and "sent him about his business". Beardmore then left the Company and moved to the Sandwich Islands and subsequently settled in Australia.

Sources:

• "Beardmore, Owen Charles." Colonial Despatches. http://bcgenesis.uvic.ca/bios.htm.
• Bowsfield, Hartwell, ed. Fort Victoria Letters (1846-1851). Winnipeg: Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1979.
• Hudson's Bay Company Archives. "Beardmore, Owen Charles Joseph." Biographical Sheets. http://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/archives/hbca/biographical/b/beardmore_owen.pdf.
• Smith, Dorothy Blakey, ed. The Reminiscences of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1975.
• Smith, Robin Percival. Captain McNeill and His Wife the Nishga Chief. Sidney: Hancock House, 2001.