Hulbert Footner (April 2, 1879 – November 17, 1944) was a Canadian born American writer of primarily detective fiction. He also wrote some non-fiction.
Early career
He was born William Hulbert Footner in Hamilton, Ontario on April 2, 1879. His mother lived in New York City and was visiting with her parents in Hamilton, Ontario. Frances Christina Mills and Harold John Footner were his parents. Her family were loyalists who fled the United States between 1775 and 1815 and considered themselves British loyalists rather than either citizens of the United States or Canada throughout the 19th Century. His grandfather, William Footner, was born in England and emigrated to Canada, and settled in Montreal and had a career in architecture; one of his surviving structures is Bonsecours Market, built in 1845.
Footner attended grade school in Manhattan and beyond that was self-educated. His complete reading program of classics of literature is laid out in his journal. His first known published item is a poem titled Roundelay For March published in 1902. His first article was published in 1903. Its subject was a canoe trip with a companion on the Hudson River, which began on the Fourth of July from the outskirts of New York City and ended at Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Footner wrote a four-act play, titled, The Saving of Zavia in 1904 that he later retitled, "The Younger Mrs. Favor," He accepted a part in a play, Sherlock Holmes, which opened in Baltimore, when the lead actor made a commitment to produce his play. His acting role took him to forty-one states and four Canadian provinces. His play was never produced. While traveling he wrote a vaudeville sketch for two characters, his Long-lost Child, which he and a comedian from the closed show performed in, until his partner asked that he replace himself. Two decades later a Baltimore Sun columnist wrote extensively about his early experiences in the theater world. He returned to New York and nearly starved there, living on thirty cents a day, but fully occupied by a long list of classic literary books and plays, which substituted for a formal education.
He accepted a reporter job on the Calgary "Morning Albertan" in 1906, which was the year after Alberta became a province. His job was dangerous in the lawless town. He was saved by an assignment that sent him to Edmonton to report on the first meeting of the new province's legislature. He was appointed historian to a legislative expedition formed to explore the unexplored northern part of the province. His job was canceled when the expedition was abandoned and in his words, "I undertook to make the journey of 3000 miles or so on my own." He travelled by canoe alone to Lesser Slave Lake, then to Peace River Crossing and on to Spirit River and Pouce Coupe Prairie. He paid his expenses by syndicating the story to several Canadian newspapers.
He returned to New York City and took and lost an office job; almost starved again but sold two western adventure stories to Century magazine, after which he departed New York in his canoe for Chesapeake Bay in 1910. He experienced bad weather at Baltimore that forced him to take the steamboat Westmoreland with a ticket to Solomons, Maryland, a stop, according to the boat's purser, that had not been made for seventeen years. He wrote Two on the Trail, his first novel at Solomons, which was published by Doubleday, Page & Co., in 1911. His story is a fictionalized version of his 1906, 3,000-mile canoe trip made through Northern Alberta alone. His story in this romantic and exciting, adventurous novel, retraces his voyage by means of a "scene by scene reproduction of the author’s single-handed experiences" in his canoe; "that are, his visual experiences, not his emotional ones, for he went alone!"
He made a second journey to the Northwest Territory, and this time with a partner, Auville Eager who he trained in canoe handling during a journey to Florida and return. His trip to the far-north, unexplored regions of Canada began in the early summer of 1911. His explorations opened with a series of rickety, railroad rides west through the Rockies, north by wagons into British Columbia to Yellowhead Lake where they launched a ribbed, folding canvas boat and headed north down the Fraser River, and as he admits, "thoroughly scared of the rapids ahead". He and his partner continued on a northerly course to the upper regions of Alberta on the great Hay River that flowed due north to the Great Slave Lake located in the Territory of MacKenzie. His explorations ended at the Alexandra Falls.