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From 1862 to 1874 the HBC trader became Her Majesty's Hired Survey Ship Beaver. After the HBC sold the ship in 1874, it was used as a workhorse and tow until 1888, when it was wrecked in the First Narrows in Vancouver harbour. Only a few relics remain.

King George's Sound Company (Richard Cadman Etches and Co), founded 1785 in London to trade for furs on the Northwest Coast.

In 1792, after exploratory voyages by Spaniards Manuel Quimper (1790) and Francisco de Eliza (1791), the extent of Juan de Fuca Strait remained a mystery. Some still believed the strait held the entry to the fabled Northwest Passage.

Trail of '98, a reference to the Chilkoot Trail and other northern trails scaled by prospectors during the Klondike Gold Rush, which was at its height in 1898. Robert W. Service tells the story of these prospectors in his first novel, The Trail of '98 (1910).

Western Settlement, see PRAIRIE WEST.

Yukon Field Force (1898-1900), composed of 203 officers and men drawn from all 3 branches (cavalry, artillery and infantry) of the Permanent Force of the Canadian Militia.

A number of highways in southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta roughly follow the original route. The ride was re-enacted in 1999, the 125th anniversary of the march.

The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) was a branch of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada with a focus on Western Canada. It was headquartered in Regina, Saskatchewan. The PFRA also had 22 district offices throughout the Prairie provinces. The agency began in response to the drought crisis of the 1930s in the Prairies. However, for nearly eight decades, it continued to help farmers conserve soil, prevent erosion, develop water resources and manage pasture land.

Smallpox is an infectious disease caused by the variola virus. The disease arrived in what is now Canada with French settlers in the early 17th century. Indigenous people had no immunity to smallpox, resulting in devastating infection and death rates. In 1768, arm-to-arm inoculation became more widely practised in North America. By 1800, advances in vaccination helped control the spread of smallpox. Public health efforts also reduced rates of infection. In the 20th century, Canadian scientists helped the World Health Organization eradicate smallpox. Eradication was achieved in 1979, but virus stocks still exist for research and safety reasons.

Click here for definitions of key terms used in this article.

The White Pass & Yukon Route railway was built to meet the demand for transportation to the gold fields of the Yukon River basin during the Klondike Gold Rush. Completed in 1900, it was a feat of engineering and one of the steepest railways in North America. It ran 177 km from Skagway, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon. Today, tourist rail excursions run on a portion of the original line.

Under the terms of 3 conventions Spain was obliged to accede to British requests and compensate the British for their losses.

A Promyshlennik is a Russian (chiefly Cossack) free-lance exploiter of natural resources, notably furs. Like the coureurs de bois, promyshlenniki had a sure instinct for rivers, forests and terrain.

Anson Northup, the first of many steamers to navigate the Red River from Minnesota to the Red River Colony. Shortly after its arrival in Fort Garry in June 1859, the Anson Northup was purchased by the Hudson's Bay Company and entrepreneur J.C. Burbank, who renamed it the Pioneer.

Residential schools were government-sponsored religious schools created to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Schools in the North were run by missionaries for nearly a century before the federal government began to open new, so-called modern institutions in the 1950s. This was less than a decade after a Special Joint Committee (see Indigenous Suffrage) found that the system was ineffectual. The committee’s recommendations led to the eventual closure of residential schools across the country.

Scrip is any document used in place of legal tender, for example a certificate or voucher, where the bearer is entitled to certain rights. In 1870, the Canadian government devised a system of scrip — referred to as Métis scrip — that issued documents redeemable for land or money. Scrip was given to Métis people living in the West in exchange for their land rights. The scrip process was legally complex and disorganized; this made it difficult for Métis people to acquire land, yet simultaneously created room for fraud. In March 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the federal government failed to provide the Métis with the land grant they were promised in the Manitoba Act of 1870. Negotiations between various levels of government and the Métis Nation concerning the reclamation of land rights continue.

Rupert’s Land was a vast territory of northern wilderness. It represented a third of what is now Canada. From 1670 to 1870, it was the exclusive commercial domain of the Hudson’s Bay Company(HBC) and the primary trapping grounds of the fur trade. The territory was named after Prince Rupert, the HBC’s first governor. Three years after Confederation, the Government of Canada acquired Rupert’s Land from the HBC for CAD$1.5-million (£300,000). It is the largest real estate transaction (by land area) in the country’s history. The purchase of Rupert’s Land transformed Canada geographically. It changed from a modest country in the northeast of the continent into an expansive one that reached across North America. Rupert’s Land was eventually divided among Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories.