Exploration

Canada’s 90 Greatest Explorers: Going beyond

Part of our roundup of 90 of Canada’s greatest explorers, these 17 explorers boldly went where few have dared

Jan 29, 2020
944 words
4 minutes

Alexander Mackenzie
1764-1820 | Montreal / Lower Canada

By Adam Shoalts
RCGS Explorer-in-Residence

Thirteen years before Lewis and Clark crossed North America to the Pacific Ocean, Mackenzie did it with fewer resources, with less fanfare, and over a more difficult route.

This hardscrabble explorer learned adversity young: born on the wild and forlorn Isle of Lewis, off Scotland’s northwest coast, at age 10 he was sent to North America, and by 16 he was on his own in the rough and tumble world of the fur trade. Mackenzie proved a quick study; he would eventually learn to speak five languages, including two Indigenous languages that would serve him well. Resourceful, resolute and daring, at age 25 he set off in a birchbark canoe with the audacious goal of crossing North America.

En route, Mackenzie traversed thousands of kilometres of difficult and diverse terrain, from immense forests to snow-capped mountains, blackfly-infested swamps and wind-swept tundra. Ultimately, Mackenzie wound up not on the Pacific Ocean, as he had hoped, but instead on the Arctic Ocean, following the great river that now bears his name to its outlet.

Unlike many explorers, Mackenzie led by example, sharing in the hard labours of exploration — paddling canoes, portaging and taking on dangerous tasks such as scrambling ahead along cliffs or tracking his canoe with ropes up raging mountain torrents — winning admiration and respect in the process. Not content with what he had accomplished, Mackenzie spent four years improving his mapmaking abilities before setting off in 1793 with a small party — again with the aim of crossing North America.

This time he succeeded, traversing the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific before retracing his route back (he remains the first known person to have done so). Perhaps most impressively, in an era when violence was the norm, in all his wanderings across tens of thousands of kilometres and through a bewildering diversity of landscapes and cultures, Mackenzie never once shed blood, and helped provide the foundations for a transcontinental nation.

MATHIEU DA COSTA
1589-1619 | Quebec City

Explorer and multilingual interpreter who was the first recorded free black person in Canada. Worked with European traders, explorers and Indigenous groups, possibly travelling with Samuel de Champlain.

ÉTIENNE BRÛLÉ
1592-1633 | Upper Canada

Interpreter and guide, and the first European beyond the St. Lawrence. As the first Frenchman to live with Indigenous Peoples, he ranged widely around the Great Lakes region with members of his adoptive Algonquin community.

PIERRE-ESPRIT RADISSON
1636-1710 | Trois-Rivières

Fur trader and explorer for both France and England. Early in his career, was captured by and assimilated into an Iroquois community, later surviving torture after a failed escape. Eventually co-founded the Hudson’s Bay Company.

PIERRE GAULTIER DE VARENNES,
SIEUR DE LA VÉRENDRYE
1685-1749 | Trois-Rivières, Que. / Montreal

JOSEPH LAFRANCE
1707-45 | Fort Michilimackinac, Que.

Métis fur trader who explored inland routes between Montreal and York Factory, on Hudson Bay. Estimated to have canoed more than 27,000 km throughout Canada over his career.

SAMUEL HEARNE
1745-92 | Northern Man. / Northern Sask.

The first European to reach the Arctic Ocean and Northwest Passage by an overland route, part of an otherwise entirely Dene party. Went farther North than any other European at that time.

JACQUES RAPHAEL FINLAY
1768-1828 | Northeast Saskatchewan

Métis scout and interpreter who guided David Thompson across the Continental Divide and located the Columbia River.

PETER FIDLER
1769-1822 | Fort Dauphin, Man.

HBC surveyor and fur trader who mapped regions from Hudson Bay to Lake Athabasca and the Rockies. Overwintered with a Chipewyan community, learning their language.

FRANÇOIS BEAULIEU II
1771-1872 | Salt River, N.W.T.

Yellowknife tribal chief, Arctic guide and advisor to both Alexander Mackenzie and John Franklin; was the reason Franklin’s 1825 Arctic expedition was the most successful of its time.

MARIE-ANNE GABOURY
1780-1875 | Maskinongé, Que.

First woman of Euro-descent to travel to Western Canada, living on open plains with her husband, other voyageurs and Indigenous Peoples. Settled in Red River, Man. Was Louis Riel’s grandmother.

ERLAND ERLANDSON
1790-1875 | Port Hope, Ont.

A Danish sailor and HBC clerk who, with Indigenous guides, became the first European to travel by land across the Labrador Peninsula, crossing from the Hudson Strait to the Atlantic.

GUY LALIBERTÉ
1959- | Quebec City

Founder of Cirque du Soleil and the first Canadian space tourist, visiting the International Space Station and returning aboard Soyuz TMA-14. He dedicated his journey to raising awareness of water issues affecting Earth.

JILL HEINERTH (FRCGS)
1965- | Carleton Place, Ont.

A leading cave diver and documentarian, and the first person to enter and film Antarctic iceberg-cave ecosystems. She has gone farther into underwater caves than any other woman, and created the first 3D underwater cave system map.

MARIO RIGBY
1985- | Toronto

Walked and kayaked south to north across Africa to highlight the continent‘s communities, and cycled Canada west to east to encourage greater diversity in exploration and the outdoor industry.

ADAM SHOALTS (FRCGS)
1986- | Fenwick, Ont.

A solo northern explorer, naturalist and author who completed a 3,000-km-plus journey across Canada’s Arctic, a strenuous exploration of the Hudson Bay Lowlands’ Again River and more. Has been called Canada’s Indiana Jones.

FRCGS indicates a Fellow of The Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Who would be in your top 90? Who would be number one? Let us know on Twitter @CanGeo!