A self-taught amateur photographer and former employee of the Hudson's Bay Company at Moose Factory, Horetzky accompanied Sandford Fleming's 1871 survey party to western Canada. The Fleming party surveyed the Canadian Rockies for a possible route for the proposed transcontinental railway. While at Jasper House, Horetzky took this photograph of the party's cariolles (dog sleds) and left a rare glimpse of early winter travel in the days before the railway.