In Her Own Footsteps: Flora Ross and Her Struggle for Identity and Independence in the Colonial West

In the summer of 1859 British and American troops stood at the brink of war over a small island in the Pacific Northwest each claiming sovereignty over the region in a military standoff that has become known as the Pig War of San Juan Island. In the midst of the dispute sat a Hudsons Bay Company farm where seventeen year-old Flora Ross the Métis daughter (Anishinaabe/Scottish) of a prominent company family nursed a farmworkers dying wife. The American instigator of the military incursion Paul K. Hubbs Jr. courted Flora throughout the standoff and they were married as the two nations announced a peaceful joint occupation agreement. Their marriage was celebrated in newspapers as a second joint occupation of the island. But the marriage didnt turn out to be peaceful as Hubbs soon turned abusive and kept a mistress on a neighboring island. To escape Flora had to overcome the lack of civil divorce laws in the colony of their marriage the political power of her father-in-law in Washington Territory and societal prejudices against a young Métis woman struggling to regain her independence and build a career as a nurse. In Her Own Footsteps is written in novel form but tells the true story of Flora Amelia Ross-a pioneer in the B.C. healthcare industry-and her struggle for identity and independence to the extent surviving documents permit. It is B.C. history told through the eyes of a young Métis woman caught between two communities and caught between two nations.