Chronicles the perils and triumphs of the intrepid Scotsman who explored Canada's northwestern wilderness

First Crossing recounts an adventure of epic proportions -- in equal parts romantic, historically significant and compelling. It is the story of Canada's most famous explorer, Alexander Mackenzie, who in 1793 became the first person to cross the continent of North America north of Mexico. With a mix of wonderfully readable text, historical and contemporary photographs, and archival maps and illustrations, here is fresh insight into what drove Mackenzie to undertake his dramatic and dangerous quest for the Pacific Ocean, and how his daring secured Canada's legacy.

From the book: "They were five weeks out of England, driving through a storm on the icy edge of the world, when a sudden blast knocked Gabriel on her side. The helmsman tried frantically to turn the tiny ship into the wind that pinned it down, but the rudder had lifted clear of the surface and took no purchase. Water poured over the side, roaring into hatches as the wind drove the vessel across the waves and the crew clung frozen in despair. Only the captain acted, scrambling along the almost-horizontal upper sides, casting off lines to spill wind from the sails, forcing the crew into action to cut away the mizzenmast and the broken foreyard, then preventing them from doing the same to the mainmast. Finally Gabriel rose sluggishly, heavy with seawater but steering slowly off the wind. A tangle of broken rigging and sodden sails, she wallowed before the storm through the remainder of the day and all of the following night, while the captain restored order and set men to pumping the ship dry." Under orders from Queen Elizabeth I, Gabriel's captain B privateer and adventurer Martin Frobisher B took up the search for a northwestern route to Asia. A few days after enduring the storm of 14 July 1576, Frobisher sighted the most easterly outlier of Arctic North America and for the first time England became aware of this vast northern region. Over the next three summers it would be the scene of an adventure involving the fruitless search for a northwest passage, the first attempt by the British to establish a settlement in the New World, and the first major gold-mining fraud in North American history. Over 1,200 tons of rock were mined from Baffin Island and shipped to England, where they were found to contain not an ounce of gold. Yet Frobisher's claim of possession established British interest in northern North America and was the first step in the eventual establishment of British sovereignty over the northern half of the American continent. Using reports from the men who participated in the venture, details preserved in the oral histories of the Inuit, and archaeological information recovered from the sites of Elizabethan activities on Baffin Island, Robert McGhee describes Frobisher's expeditions and offers new insights into this audacious venture. The story ends on an ironic note B the capital of the new Territory of Nunavut, which restores to the Inuit a measure of the sovereignty claimed for England by Frobisher, lies at the head of the bay named after him, where over four centuries ago the English first ventured into Arctic America.

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An exploration of Indigenous people's experiences travelling from Canada to Britain and beyond from the 1770s to 1914.

Jacques Cartier's voyages of 1534, 1535, and 1541constitute the first record of European impressions of the St Lawrence region of northeastern North American and its peoples. The Voyages are rich in details about almost every aspect of the region's environment and the people who inhabited it. As Ramsay Cook points out in his introduction, Cartier was more than an explorer; he was also Canada's first ethnographer. His accounts provide a wealth of information about the native people of the region and their relations with each other. Indirectly, he also reveals much about himself and about sixteenth-century European attitudes and beliefs. These memoirs recount not only the French experience with the Iroquois, but alo the Iroquois' discovery of the French. In addition to Cartier's Voyages, a slightly amended version of H.P. Biggar's 1924 text, the volume includes a series of letters relating to Cartier and the Sieur de Roberval, who was in command of cartier on the last voyage. Many of these letters appear for the first time in English. Ramsay Cook's introduction, 'Donnacona Discovers Europe,' rereads the documents in the light of recent scholarship as well as from contemporary perspectives in order to understand better the viewpoints of Cartier and the native people with whom he came into contact.