Following his apprenticeship at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Island Lake District headquarters near Lake Winnipeg, Joseph Turner Jr. briefly returned east to the HBC’s coastal port of York Factory. There, Joseph Jr. served as a labourer for only a year before moving westward again to the Cumberland District on the Saskatchewan River in 1837.
The HBC’s Cumberland District headquarters, Cumberland House, was a major site of pemmican production and an important stopping point for boats heading to the Athabasca country. This once again placed Joseph Turner Jr. at the centre of the vibrant, interconnected Métis world.
Joseph Jr. served in numerous HBC roles at Cumberland House over the next fifteen years, including labourer, middleman, bowsman, steersman, and interpreter.
When Joseph Jr. left the HBC in 1852 at the age of 36, he retired to Red River. By that time, other members of his family had also moved west.
But Joseph Turner Jr. did not stay in Red River for long. The following year, he returned north and worked as a “freeman” at The Pas, just east of Cumberland House, where independent Métis traders siphoned trade away from the HBC post.
In 1853, Joseph Jr. moved to Fort à la Corne, a Métis settlement on the Saskatchewan River, where the HBC had a provisioning post. He raised a family at Fort à la Corne and worked there as an interpreter for the HBC into the 1860s.
Following Joseph Jr.'s lead, subsequent generations of the Métis Turner family built lives for themselves at Red River, Fort à la Corne, and other Métis settlements throughout the Homeland.