author
Theresa Gowanlock
1863–1899
Best known for a vivid firsthand account of the 1885 Frog Lake crisis, this Canadian memoirist wrote from direct experience after surviving weeks in captivity during the North-West Resistance. Her story helped shape how many readers of the time understood those events.
1 Audiobook
Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear
by Theresa Gowanlock, Theresa Delaney
About the author
Born Theresa Mary Johnson in Ontario in 1863, she married John Alexander Gowanlock in 1884 and moved west to Frog Lake in what was then the North-West Territories. In April 1885, during the violence at Frog Lake, her husband was killed and she was taken captive along with other residents.
After about two months in captivity, she was released and soon became widely known through Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear, a memoir written with Theresa Delaney and published in 1885. The book offered a personal, immediate account of the crisis and made her one of the best-known women connected with that moment in Canadian history.
She later returned to Ontario and died in 1899 at just 36 years old. Though her published work was brief, it remains an important eyewitness narrative from the North-West Resistance and the events surrounding Frog Lake.