In 1909, fur buyer William Oliver Kennedy Ross traveled overland from his home in Quebec City, along the North Shore of the St. Lawrence into Southern Labrador and across the Strait of Belle Isle to the west coast of Newfoundland. His main purpose was to purchase furs from local trappers and middlemen. During his travels, he occasionally bought other items from local people including heirlooms that today would be considered antiques.

This journal represents a day-by-day narrative of his activities over a period of nearly three months and a distance of some 1,600 kilometers. He departs Quebec City in mid-March, and by early June, he is ice-bound in the Bay of Islands in Western Newfoundland waiting anxiously to cross the Gulf to Labrador and return home. In Quest of Fur, records the incidents Kennedy observed and the many people he encountered on his travels.