Isobel G. Finlayson (nee. Simpson) was born in London in 1811 and married Duncan Finlayson, a senior officer in the Hudson’s Bay Company, when she was 27 years old. He soon returned to Upper Fort Garry and she followed a year later. Her diary of the trip through Hudson Bay, and from York Factory (where Duncan joined her) via the Hayes river and the length of Lake Winnipeg, is wonderful. The couple spent a whole day waiting for more favourable winds on a small island where they wandered together and she reflects, “I shall look back to the hours I have passed with him in solitary wilderness as among the happiest I have spent during my sojourn in the Far West.” The next day, the party camped on a narrow strip of low beach and were surprised to find that the area was completely covered with frogs. Isobel writes, “Having rather an antipathy to these creatures, I mounted on a stone, having first dispersed a large party that were serenading each other most melodiously around it, and there I stood like Patience on a monument, waiting till the fires were lighted and the tents pitched.” After many efforts to keep the frogs out of their sleeping quarters, Isobel woke to find a frog perched on their blanket and staring into their faces. She writes, “This was the only encampment throughout the journey with which we could have had reason to complain, and even here the annoyances were of so trifling a nature that they were much more calculated to excite a smile.”