author

Theresa Delaney

1849–1913

Remembered for a rare first-person account of the 1885 North-West Resistance, this Canadian memoirist wrote from direct experience after surviving the Frog Lake attack and weeks of captivity in Big Bear's camp. Her voice gives the book its urgency, mixing hardship, grief, and eyewitness detail.

1 Audiobook

Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear

Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear

by Theresa Gowanlock, Theresa Delaney

About the author

Born Theresa Fulford in 1849 near Aylmer, Quebec, she later married John Delaney and went west with him during a turbulent period in Canadian history. When violence broke out at Frog Lake on April 2, 1885, her husband was killed and she was taken captive, an ordeal that shaped the work for which she is remembered.

That same year, she and fellow survivor Theresa Gowanlock published Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear: The Life and Adventures of Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney. The book is a firsthand narrative of captivity during the North-West Resistance and remains the main work associated with her.

Delaney died in Ottawa on April 18, 1913, at age 63. Because so little biographical material survives apart from records tied to Frog Lake and her book, she stands out today less as a prolific writer than as an important witness whose memoir preserves one perspective on a traumatic and contested moment in Canadian history.