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The Exploration of Canada

Who discovered and explored the land we know as Canada? Was it the first inhabitants who entered North America over ten thousand years ago? Was it the Norse who established the first European settlement? Or was it John Cabot or Jacques Cartier who first claimed its shores for their respective nations? The answer is that the discovery and exploration of Canada was accomplished by many people and many nations, over thousands of years.

Europeans rarely ventured anywhere in North America that First Nations and Inuit had not already been. Native people often acted as guides, informants, map-drawers, and even saviours to visitors who sought their help. It would be centuries before anyone understood the vastness of the continent, and Native peoples were crucial participants in the exploration of it. Since they left few records of their own, we know about them mostly from accounts written by others.

The accounts written by explorers and visitors to the continent tend to describe the writer's sense of wonder on encountering strange new people, lands and animals. These accounts convey both respect and fear of the natural environment, and recount daring journeys and deaths from cold, hunger, and battle, as well as what the narrators knew of the adventurers who had come before them.

Crossing the Atlantic - 11th Century

In the 11th century the Norse people of Scandinavia had already established a reputation in Europe for daring seamanship, but their most famous voyage would stand unmatched for four hundred years.

In lapstrake boats and with no navigational tools, a group of Norsemen caught the first glimpses from sea of North America. Probably not knowing that they were the first to see the continent from the sea, the Norse were equally unaware of the significance of their later settlement in what is now Newfoundland. There is no solid evidence as to why the Norse colonizers did not stay to exploit their discoveries  --  Canadian history may have taken an interesting turn if they had.

The telling of these trans-oceanic adventures was passed down orally through generations, and the stories written down a few hundred years afterward in what have become known as the Vinland sagas. In the intervening centuries, Europe remained unaware of the Norse discoveries and did not follow until John Cabot's journeys.

Myths abound as to others who may have crossed the Atlantic before the Norse. It was written in the ninth century that St. Brendan, a sixth century Irish monk, travelled around Europe's Northern Islands in a curragh (a small boat with a wicker frame, designed for use on lakes and rivers). One of the islands he supposedly visited was later called "St. Brendan's Isle" and placed on contemporary maps in the far western part of the Atlantic.

The "New" Continent - 16th Century

At the beginning of the 16th century, several European countries were determined to find a sea-route to the rich trading countries in the East  --  one that would bypass the treacherous overland journey through the Ottoman and Muslim empires. The Portugese, then the reigning masters of navigation, had just succeeded in finding such a route, but it involved braving the turbulent waters around Cape Horn, at the tip of Africa.

With Portugal soon dominating the African route and the southern parts of America under Spanish control, England and France had little choice but to look for another way. They surmised that the answer could lie to the north of Spain's American possessions.

Although the Cabots and the Corte Reals reported their sightings of northern North America, it was descriptions by European fishermen of these new lands and waters that had a substantial impact on the French. They were the first to pursue the Northwest Passage.

Expanding in All Directions - 17th Century

Well over a hundred years had passed since fishermen had begun their seasonal exploitation of Canada's rich Atlantic waters. Before the turn of the 17th century, another industry had begun to emerge: the fur trade.

Native peoples had been trading furs with European fishermen and explorers since the first early encounters, but as beaver-fur hats became a coveted fashion item in Europe at the end of the 16th century, contact between the two cultures dramatically increased. It also led to the establishment of the first permanent European settlements in Canada. Of those involved in these new outposts, Samuel de Champlain stands out as the primary agent of French expansion. He and his contemporaries left written accounts of their experiences and it is from them that we begin to learn in more detail the nature of the land and its inhabitants.

There were other motives leading to exploration. French clergy such as the Jesuits and the Recollets began arriving in New France as part of a missionary drive to convert the Native peoples to Catholicism. Although perhaps misguided in purpose, these educated men made extraordinary observations during their travels. The writings of the Jesuits were published in France as the "Relations".

In the north, throughout the century, the search for the elusive passage to the East continued.

Exploring Westward - 18th Century

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the French and the English were engaged in a war that did not end until 1712. With the peace outlined in the Treaty of Utrecht, both sides saw a shifting of their possessions and trading rights in North America. One result of this shift was that much territory formerly claimed by the French now came under British control. Another was that the invaluable relationship with the Iroquois, as well as trading rights with other nations west of the French-held territory along the St. Lawrence, would now be open to the British.

Even with the revival of the fur trade shortly after the end of the war (there had been a glut on the European market for beaver fur), exploration in Canada was relatively inactive for the first part of the century. Towards the middle of the century however, the Hudson's Bay Company began to expand their operations further west due to reports of the unprecedented travels of La Vérendrye and others, whose progress threatened to gain them too much ground in the trade.

Peace came to an end in 1743, when France declared war on Britain.

Mapping the Northwest - 18th Century

1763 saw the end of nearly two hundred years of European conflict over the possession of northern North America, as France was forced to relinquish its claims in Canada. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, a renewed struggle was in command of the still-lucrative fur trade, this time, between rival companies and partnerships.

Competition for trade produced a remarkable series of explorers and mapmakers  --  Canadian, Native, British, and American. Fuelled by the fur-trade, these explorers pushed back the northwestern boundaries of the British claims in Canada and ultimately reached the Pacific Ocean by land. It had taken three hundred years for explorers to cross the country.

The mapping and gathering of information in this era laid the foundation for the mass western immigration of the next century, by which time the fur trade would be almost non-existent.

The Pacific Coast - 18th Century

While fur traders edged nearer to the Pacific on overland routes, the ships of several different nations had begun to explore the coast by water. The Pacific shore was one of the few in the Americas that was still relatively unknown to Europeans, and where the Native inhabitants had likely never encountered them.

The Russians, approaching from the Arctic, had already sighted the northern reaches of the west coast as early as the 1720's. The Spanish arrived from the south and later began laying claim to parts of the coast, eventually overlapping with Russian and British claims. Only the British produced maps of their findings with any speed, so it was not until they arrived in the 1780's that the world began to see a clear picture of Canada's Pacific region and its inhabitants. With their arrival began the British colonization of the west coast and the finalization of the North American map. By the time of Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne in 1837, the continental outline would be complete.

The Arctic and More - 19th Century

With Canada's Atlantic and Pacific coasts mapped, attention again turned to the Arctic. The desire to find a northwest passage had waned somewhat with the growing suspicion that such a water passage, if it existed, would never be commercially viable. However, Cook's recent voyages, as well as whalers' reports of shifting ice in the Arctic, had piqued European interest in Canada's north. Also, the end of the Napoleonic wars left the British navy without a purpose.

Robert McClure managed to complete the passage partly by water, and partly by land. His success was largely due to the survival strategies he enthusiastically copied from the Inuit. This lesson was hard earned, as the feat was achieved only after several disastrous British military-led expeditions over the better part of a century.

Towards the end of the century, the motives for geographical exploration in Canada became, increasingly, scientific: investigation of climate, flora, fauna, geology and anthropology. Most of the expeditions were made by Canadians, Americans and Norwegians. Some were privately financed, but increasingly government agencies and museums were involved. The Carnegie Museum (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) alone sponsored nine expeditions between 1901 and 1920 to subarctic regions to study bird populations.

Triumph in the High North - 20th Century

By the turn of the twentieth century, the growing importance of gathering geographic information on Canada's northern regions continued, and a new emphasis on the ethnographic study of the Inuit emerged.

The search for the Northwest Passage by water to the East remained. Encouraged by the success of Robert McClure as well as by his own adventurous streak, Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, finally sailed the Passage. He conquered the route which had intrigued centuries of travellers before him.

A new motive for knowledge and exploration of Canada's north appeared  --  the need for Canada to assert sovereignty over the Arctic archipelago that it had inherited from Britain several years after Confederation. In the wake of Amundsen's voyage, the Laurier government found itself having to defend what it considered to be Canadian territory against foreigners who were exploiting Arctic waters freely, not paying duties, and even claiming parts of it for other nations.

 Source: Library and Archives of Canada