70 kilometers in 7 hours on snowshoes

I recently read Ray Mears’ Northern Wilderness, about Canada’s boreal forest.

Like all of his work, it’s excellent. It sets out with a description of the nature and makeup of the forest, and the flora and fauna to be found there. Then it describes the First Peoples to inhabit the area. After that he describes the Europeans who came. The coureurs du bois, and their voyages of trade and exploration through the Great Lakes and Ottawa and French Rivers. Then the English entry, through the Hudson Bay which gave them a more direct entry and exit from and back again to Europe. The object of all of it was of course, the fur of the beaver. The insatiable demand for the pelts and the felt that could be made from it for hats, drove several notable explorers across the west and north of Canada. Not only to discover more sources of furs, but also to continue searching for the elusive North West Passage. It covers Samuel Hearne, Alexander MacKenzie, David Thompson, John Franklin, and finally, John Rae.

Hey, I recognize that name. He lived in Hamilton for a time. Not far from me is a plaque noting where he once lived.

Dr John Rae MD, LL.D, FRS, FRCS, was born on 30 September 1813, at the Hall of Clestrain in the parish of Orphir in Orkney. Rae’s father was the factor of Sir William Honeyman’s Orkney estate, and the young John Rae thrived on the outdoor life. He spent much of his childhood sailing, climbing, trekking, hunting and fishing, pursuits that would serve him well in his future endeavours. When he was six, his father became the Orkney agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company. (Most of the employees of the HBC came from the Orkney Islands, as it was felt that their familiarity with life in a harsh climate would make them well suited to the equally brutal existence to be found on the desolate, wind swept shores of the Hudson Bay.)

In 1833, shortly after qualifying as a surgeon in Edinburgh, John Rae signed on as a surgeon aboard the HBC ship Prince of Wales. The ship’s destination was Moose Factory in James Bay. He intended to serve only a single season, but in time he found himself actually enjoying the life up there, and he ended up remaining there as surgeon for a decade. Rae wisely learned the lessons the native inhabitants were willing to teach. He came to have tremendous respect for their culture and traditions and especially their survival skills. He became an extremely adept snowshoer, reportedly covering 1200 miles in two months in 1844/45. This earned him the nickname Aglooka - “he who takes long strides” - from the Inuit.

Regrettably, his willingness to learn the natives way of life and language, was regarded with suspicion by his countrymen. It was considered disgraceful by some of his priggish Victorian English associates. This arrogance and hubris would cost many of them dearly. They refused to learn the lessons of the indigenous inhabitants, who had not only survived, but thrived, for millennia in this difficult landscape. How to dress, how to move, how to shelter, how to eat. Rae knew that to succeed, he had to dress just like the Inuit, hunt along the way for food just the way they did, sleep in the same shelters they did, and travel very lightly. He knew these people were not “primitive”, and that the technological achievements of European civilization didn’t necessarily make them superior in this environment. 

“The British failed to understand that there was no better measure of genius than the ability to survive in the Arctic environment with a technology that was limited to what you could carve from ivory, bone, antler, soapstone and slate.”

p.205, The Wayfinders, Wade Davis

It was precisely those skills, not to mention his legendary stamina, that led to him being commissioned in 1846 to go on his first expedition north to the west coast of Melville Peninsula from Fury and Hecla Strait southwards, and westwards to Dease, to survey blank spots on the existing maps. He covered thousands of kilometers, much of it on foot.

In 1848 joined Sir John Richardson in his search for the Northwest Passage.

By the winter of 1849, Rae had taken over the charge of the Mackenzie River district at Fort Simpson.

He was soon called upon to head north again, this time in search of two missing ships from the Franklin Expedition.

The expedition, led by Sir John Franklin, had disappeared after leaving England in 1845 to find the Northwest Passage - the long searched for navigable Arctic route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. Two ships had set out, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, with 134 men in total. When they failed to reappear, one of the largest and costliest searches ever was undertaken to find out what had become of them.

In charge of the search was Sir John Richardson, with Rae as his second-in-command. Rae ended up leading two missions in an attempt to locate the missing sailors. All the while, Rae continued with his work to chart the unknown territory of the northern Canadian coast. Because of this, he succeeded where Franklin had failed, and proved the existence of the North West Passage. While exploring the Boothia Peninsula in April 1854 Rae made contact with local Inuit, from whom he learned that a group of 40 white men had been seen four years previously. Watched by a group of native seal hunters, the white men had been dragging a boat and sledges south along the west coast of King William Island. They had also discovered around 30 bodies and a number of graves. (Lacking the necessary survival skills in what was to them an alien environment, the men had died of starvation. Their bodies were still strapped into leather traces with which they were expected to pull a 650 pound oak and iron sled upon which sat an 800 pound dory filled with silver dinner plates, a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield, and other pointless personal effects of Royal Navy officers.)

Rae wrote: “Some of the bodies had been buried (probably those of the first victims of famine); some were in a tent or tents; others under the boat, which had been turned over to form a shelter, and several lay scattered about in different directions.” He added: “From the mutilated state of many of the bodies and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched Countrymen had been driven to the last dread alternative - cannibalism - as a means of prolonging existence.” He later acquired some of the dead men’s possessions - cutlery, watches and a medal that had once belonged to Franklin - from the Inuit, that proved the expedition had perished. Rae did not actually visit the site, saying that the Inuit were reluctant to make the 10 or 12 day trek to the site of the ill-fated expedition. This “failure” to visit the site led to considerable criticism after Rae’s report to the Admiralty was published. It damned the doctor in the eyes of Victorian England.

Rae’s conclusions regarding the fate of the Franklin Expedition didn’t make him very popular. His report was condemned, and his integrity was immediately called into question. Here was a man noted for his willingness to consort with “primitives” and “savages”, dress like them, eat like them, implying that valiant Royal Navy men had resorted to cannibalism. And even worse, he took their word at face value, and didn’t bother to confirm or verify it. (What none of them seemed to grasp of course, was that having lived among them for twenty years, he knew implicitly that he could take their word at face value. Among nomadic, hunter/gatherer tribes the world over, lying is considered one of the worst sins imaginable. It just isn’t done. And they had absolutely no reason to lie to him about what they had seen. They certainly stood to gain nothing from doing so.)

Lady Jane Franklin, was particularly strident in her attacks. She sought to glorify the memory of her husband as the man who found the Northwest Passage, so Rae’s revelations were especially unwelcome. The writer Charles Dickens came to her aid, publishing several articles and pamphlets rejecting Rae’s conclusions, and the way in which he had come to those conclusions. According to Dickens, it was unthinkable that the English Navy “would or could in any extremity of hunger, alleviate the pains of starvation by this horrible means”.

But John Rae refused to be cowed. He stood by his report and the circumstances surrounding the fate of the Franklin Expedition.

Later, an expedition sent by Lady Franklin herself, found a small cairn at Point Victory, on the north west coast of King William Island, revealed the full story. Here, one Lieutenant Crozier, second in command, had left a message confirming that Sir John Franklin had died on June 11, 1847. Franklin had been the 25th man to perish on the expedition. The cairn was found in May 1859, 11 years after Crozier had written that the survivors were starting out for Great Fish River. (Exactly where Rae had said the corpses were found.) Skeletons of some of the last survivors appeared to confirm that the men had indeed resorted to cannibalism.

Dr John Rae retired from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1856 at the age of 43. The following year he showed up here in Hamilton, staying until 1860. While here, he helped establish the Hamilton Association for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art, and served as its first vice-president.

His exploring days were far from over however. He left Hamilton in 1860 to explore the landward side of a route for a telegraph line to America, through the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland. In 1864 he made a further telegraph survey in the west of Canada. In 1884 (at age 71 it should be noted) he was back in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company (and the Western Telegraph Union Company), this time exploring a proposed telegraph route through Siberia, the Bering Strait, Alaska and British Columbia. He surveyed a section of the proposed route from Red River to Victoria, navigating a sizable length of the Fraser River in a dugout canoe, without the benefit of a guide. The notes he took later proved very valuable in the development of the Canadian west.

Dr John Rae died from an aneurysm in London on July 22, 1893, aged 80. He was buried in the kirkyard of St Magnus’ Cathedral, Kirkwall, a week later.

Inside the cathedral nave is a memorial to the man - a recumbent figure carved in stone. Wearing his Arctic travelling clothes, Rae sleeps with his rifle by his side, and a blanket thrown over his body.

Rae Strait (between King William Island and the Boothia Peninsula), Rae Isthmus, Rae River, Mount Rae, Fort Rae and the village of Rae-Edzo (now Behchoko), Northwest Territories were all named for him.

But sadly, due to all the Franklin controversy, John Rae, and his notable achievements, began to fade from the pages of the history books. His exploits were ignored or, at best, grudgingly acknowledged. Franklin and his officers were posthumously knighted, even though they had failed to find the North West Passage. Rae actually had discovered the last link in the puzzle, along with a lot of other valuable surveying and mapping, but received no recognition or award. He was the only major explorer of the era not to receive a knighthood.

There are efforts to raise him to his deserved prominence in the annals of history. Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael introduced into the UK Parliament a motion in July 2004 proposing, that the House “regrets that Dr Rae was never awarded the public recognition that was his due”. In March 2009 he introduced a further motion urging Parliament to formally state it “regrets that memorials to Sir John Franklin outside the Admiralty headquarters and inside Westminster Abbey still inaccurately describe Franklin as the first to discover the [North West] Passage, and calls on the Ministry of Defence and the Abbey authorities to take the necessary steps to clarify the true position.”

This is the plaque that stands here in Hamilton.

Here’s the part I love: “In the winter of 1859, he is said to have snowshoed from Hamilton to Toronto in seven hours for a dinner engagement.”

Uh...wow.

That’s about 10 clicks an hour. On snowshoes. I guess he probably went straight down Bay Street, across the bay, and in as straight a line as possible across Lake Ontario. (I imagine he probably wanted to change and freshen up when he got there though. Or since everyone was likely smoking stogies or pipes or stuffing snuff up there nose, maybe it didn’t matter so much.)

I’m not sure too many men of his caliber exist anymore.