I stumbled upon this large, framed photo on the wall of the New Brunswick Marysville Place government building, when I was there in the fall doing risk management workshops with tourism operators there. A small caption lists 1862, the earliest specific evidence I’ve found yet of Canada’s early guiding industry.
George Taylor was an outdoor photographer in the earliest days
of cameras, in an era when cameras were big and exposure times long (think a
big wooden box on a stand, with a black curtain draped over the photographer).
Taylor traveled the province and created some of Canada’s first images of the
wilderness, and by default wilderness guides (these photos posted here are
his).
Some online searching indicates the guide is likely Gabriel
Acquin, a Maliseet from what is now the Fredericton area, having been displaced
like most of the Indigenous population in those days. Guiding was perhaps
forced adaptation to colonial pressures, and he made the most of it. As a hunting
and fishing guide first taking out British military officers stationed in
Fredericton, his woodsman skills earned him fame and a client list including
the visiting Prince of Wales.
Acquin mentored a young Henry Braithwaite, New Brunswick’s
first nonnative guide and outfitter who went on to further fame as the
guide-of-the-day, and an initial signatory to the 1899 guides association that
still exists today.
