Browse "Exploration"

Breadalbane is a ghost ship, a three-masted barque lying beneath the ice of the Northwest Passage. It is the world's northernmost known shipwreck and the best-preserved wooden ship yet found in the ocean.

Des Sauvages, ou, Voyage de Samuel Champlain (1603) records Champlain's first voyage to Canada as François Gravé du Pont's guest aboard La Bonne Renommée searching for the Northwest Passage.

Discovery, famous ship belonging to the East India Company, which first sailed into the Arctic under the command of George Weymouth in 1602. The same ship was used by Henry HUDSON to explore Hudson Bay in 1610. Hudson was cut

Exploration of Canada by Europeans began with the Norse in the late 10th century on the country’s East Coast. Following Jacques Cartier’s arrival in 1534, over the course of the next three centuries British and French explorers gradually moved further west. Commercial, resource-based interests often drove exploration; for example, a westward route to Asia and later, the fur trade. By the mid-19th century most of the main geographical features of Canada had been mapped by European colonists. (See also Arctic Exploration.)

Throughout the history of exploration, what one group saw as new territory was often long-established homeland for another. Canada’s Arctic was no exception.

The disappearance in 1845 of Sir John Franklin and his crew in the Canadian Arctic set off the greatest rescue operation in the history of exploration.

The fur trade began in the 1600s in what is now Canada. It continued for more than 250 years. Europeans traded with Indigenous people for beaver pelts. The demand for felt hats in Europe drove this business. The fur trade was one of the main reasons that Europeans explored and colonized Canada. It built relationships between Europeans and Indigenous peoples.

(This article is a plain-language summary of the fur trade. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Fur Trade in Canada.)

Histoire du Canada depuis sa découverte jusqu'à nos jours, a Canadian classic by François-Xavier GARNEAU, appeared in 4 volumes from 1845-52, tracing French Canada's development from Champlain's voyages of discovery to 1840.

The Karluk was trapped by ice in the Beaufort Sea 300 km short of the planned base, HERSCHEL ISLAND. While Stefansson was away hunting seals, the weather changed and the ship was carried westward towards Siberia for 4 months until crushed by ice.

The Land God Gave to Cain, was Jacques CARTIER's description of the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence, which he first sighted in 1534. Cartier was presumably alluding to Genesis 4, in which Cain, having killed his brother, is condemned to till land that is barren.

Mémoires de l'Amérique septentrionale, a learned and entertaining natural history of Canada, was the journal kept by Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce, baron de LAHONTAN, during his travels in New France, 1683-93.

Mer de l'Ouest ("Western Sea"), originally the goal of exploration during the French regime, was the stuff of wishful thinking obligingly corroborated by Indians. Initially thought to be an inland sea somewhere west of the Great Lakes, it gradually blended in imagination with the Pacific.

A small horde of second- and third-graders swarms down onto the blood-red deck like so many giggling pirates. But the "blood" on the deck is really red-oxide paint. And the children - from Parkcrest Elementary School in Burnaby, B.C.

Red River Expedition, the military force sent to Manitoba after the transfer of the Hudson's Bay Co territory to Canada in 1870.

South Sea Company, chartered in 1711 by the British Parliament, with a monopoly over the W coast of the Americas to a distance of 300 leagues out to sea. In 1720 it assumed a large part of the British national debt and almost collapsed that year in a stock market crash known as the South Sea Bubble.

Following the global circumnavigation of Magellan's expedition, 1519-22, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V wished to locate a N American strait into Asian waters. The Spaniards possessed information on the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts from Portuguese voyages and from BASQUE fishermen and whalers.

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.

As far back in history as the days of Marco Polo, European mariners, dreamed of a shorter sea route for reaching the riches of silk, porcelain, jewels and spices of Asia.

The Principall Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation was written by Richard Hakluyt (c 1552-1616). A passionate enthusiast of trade and colonization, convinced that English navigators "excelled all ...

The trading post can be viewed as a large household whose size and social organization reflected the cultural heritage of its members and the post's role in the fur trade.