Author and diarist born in Mulligan (Nunatsiavut) in 1844 – died in Nunatsiavut in 1940.
Margaret Baikie, née Margaret Campbell, was the eldest daughter of Lydia and Daniel Campbell. Her mother, Lydia Campbell, born to an Inuit mother and an English father, was the first Labradorian Inuk woman to write an autobiography (Sketches of Labrador Life, 1894). Margaret Baikie grew up in Mulligan (also known as Lake Melville; Nunatsiavut), located 66 kilometres northeast of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador. From her mother, she received traditional Inuit knowledge of hunting, trapping, fishing, medicine, sewing, and cooking. Hunting and trapping became passions for Margaret Baikie, and she describes some of her exploits in her writing. Testimonials from her descendants in the magazine Them Days attest to her many other skills, including embroidery and beadwork.
As an adult, Margaret Campbell met Thomas Baikie, a Scotsman from Leith (Scotland) who was passing through Canada during a stint working for the Hudson’s Bay Company. After Thomas Baikie’s contract ended, he married Margaret Campbell and settled permanently in Labrador. Together, the couple had eight children. Not much is known about Margaret Baikie’s adult life, as it seems not to have been documented. Most of the information available about her life can be found in her own autobiographical writing, which focuses on her childhood.
In 1917, at the age of seventy-three, Margaret Baikie penned a memoir about her youth in Labrador. Over 30 years after her death, her niece Flora Baikie submitted a copy of the manuscript to the oral history magazine Them Days. The text was assembled into a book and published posthumously as Labrador Memories: Reflection at Mulligan (1976, reprinted in 1983). In this chronicle, Margaret Baikie shares memories and anecdotes, some dating back to 1846. She also retells, from her perspective, some of the stories contained in her mother’s autobiography, Sketches of Labrador Life (1894). Lydia Campbell’s and Margaret Baikie’s memoirs are considered valuable historical and literary resources, as they provide detailed accounts of daily life in Labrador at that time.
In 1989, Leslie D. Baikie initiated a project to publish stories about the Baikie family, entitled Up and Down the Bay: The Baikie Family of Esquimaux Bay. She compiled several family stories, including some by Margaret Baikie. However, this project never to came to fruition; Leslie D. Baikie’s manuscript is held at the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s.
Christianity and literacy were very important to Lydia Campbell, and she made sure to pass on these two passions to her many children. Margaret Baikie and her half-brother Thomas L. Blake both followed in their mother’s footsteps, publishing books about their lives in Labrador. Lydia Campbell’s significant familial literary legacy was the object of Dale S. Blake’s doctoral dissertation, “Inuit Autobiography: Challenging the Stereotypes” (University of Alberta, 2000). Other writers descended from Lydia Campbell include Elizabeth Goudie, a niece of Margaret Baikie’s and the author of Women of Labrador, and Doris Saunders, founder and editor of Them Days and grandniece of Margaret Baikie.
Margaret Baikie died in the fall of 1940 in present-day Nunatsiavut, where she lived her whole life.