Surveyor and fur trader, born in Bolsover, England, Fidler came to Canada in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1788. He established trading posts such as Bolsover and Greenwich (1799), Chesterfield House (1800), and Nottingham (1802), but it was as a surveyor that he made his great contribution to the exploration of the west. He made the initial survey of some 5,000 miles of waterways in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and surveyed the Selkirk settlement and the boundaries of the district of Assiniboia. His compiled maps and his journals are basic historical sources. He died at Fort Dauphin soon after his retirement.