Disappointment River: Finding and Losing The Northwest Passage, Castner - B -

                                                      "From the moment Christopher Columbus realized that he had stumbled on a new continent, rather than China, there was always a tension, among European explorers, between exploiting the riches of the New World and finding a route around it." By the late 18th century, a passage north of Canada was understood to be hopeless. But the trappers and furriers of what had been New France had moved west to the Great Lakes and beyond. At the annual rendezvous at Lake Superior, the managers of the North West Company had heard of a great river heading west from the Great Slave Lake, and in 1788 chose their youngest partner, twenty-six-year old Alexander Mackenzie, to find it. If a passage to the western ocean could be found, it would mean having direct access to the Far East, a vast market for the beaver furs that were desired around the world. From Superior, his small group traveled northwest and reached* Lake Winnipeg. They wintered on the shores of Lac-Ile-a-la-Crosse in the middle of what is now Saskatchewan. The winter was harsh and they did not venture back onto the water until June, 1789. Within a few weeks, they reached the Great Slave Lake, a massive body of water that was still iced over. After a week of waiting, they travelled to the north shore and eventually found the mouth of the river that began to course to the north and west. On open waters, canoers were able to travel 40-50 miles per day. On and on they went, further north than any white men had ever gone. Eventually, they passed through the forested lands they knew, and entered a flatter, barren place without beaver, and Mackenzie realized they were headed to the Arctic and not the Pacific. His sextant calculations confirmed they were above the Arctic Circle, but he powered on to the end. When the Deh Cho River entered the Arctic, Mackenzie could see the ice that blocked the way to the west. His search for the Northwest passage had failed. In his journal, he entered "a voyage down River Disappointment." That said, he had descended the second longest river in North America and the longest in Canada. The river had flowed just over a thousand miles from the Great Slave Lake to the sea. They were well over 2,000 miles from Lake Superior, their starting point the previous summer. Mackenzie later received fame, fortune and a knighthood for transversing the continent a dozen years before Lewis and Clark. The Deh Cho is called the Mackenzie River today.


*I am befuddled by endless portaging, which does not seem to me to presage a route to Asia.