The Firehall Arts Centre presents Women of the Fur Trade from February 8 to February 23, 2025.

Set in eighteen hundred and something-something, somewhere upon the banks of a Reddish River in Treaty One Territory, three very different women with a preference for 21st-century slang find themselves stuck in a fort having tea and sharing their views on life, love, and Louis Riel.

In this powerfully funny satire, Playwright Frances Koncan shifts the focus from the male gaze on history to the power of women and their place in the rapidly changing world of the Canadian fur trade.

“I am truly excited to be producing the West Coast premiere of this work,” says Firehall Arts Centre’s Artistic Producer Donna Spencer. “Frances Koncan’s satirical look at the lives of women during the time of Louis Riel and the colonization of Canada is a very clever way of illustrating the dismantling of the traditional lives of Métis and Indigenous people of the time. Mixing contemporary references with historical actions allows the story of the play to be told in a manner that takes us from the present to the past and back again.”