Exploration | The Canadian Encyclopedia

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Displaying 1-15 of 24 results
  • Article

    Exploring the Arctic through Oral History

    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.

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    https://d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net/media/media/e11b417a-da83-452e-b3e4-4d550484f588.jpg Exploring the Arctic through Oral History
  • Article

    Breadalbane

    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.

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  • Article

    Des Sauvages, ou, Voyage de Samuel Champlain

    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.

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  • Article

    Discovery

    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

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  • Article

    Exploration

    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.)

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  • Article

    Franklin Search

    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. More than 30 expeditions over two decades would search by land and sea for clues as to his fate, in the process charting vast areas of the Canadian Arctic and mapping the complete route of the Northwest Passage. The search for clues continued into the 20th and 21st centuries. On 9 September 2014, it was announced that one of the expedition ships, later identified as the HMS Erebus, had been found off King William Island. On 12 September 2016, a team from the Arctic Research Foundation announced that they had located the Terror in Nunavut's Terror Bay, north of where the Erebus was found.

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  • Article

    Fur Trade in Canada (Plain-Language Summary)

    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.)

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  • Article

    HBC Trading Posts in Canada

    From 1670 until 1987, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) operated hundreds of trading posts in various parts of Canada and the northwestern US. During the fur trade, Indigenous trappers visited trading posts to exchange furs for valued goods produced by Europeans, including metal objects, weapons and glass beads. In 1870, the HBC’s vast territory of northern wilderness (see Rupert’s Land and North-Western Territories) was transferred to the Canadian government, and the HBC gradually transitioned from a fur trading company to a retail establishment. The HBC maintained posts in Northern Canada, however, until 1987. Some settlements that remained in and around the old trading posts developed into cities, such as Winnipeg (Fort Garry), Edmonton (Fort Edmonton) and Victoria (Fort Victoria). Some First Nations that had established themselves near HBC posts also have names that reflect their fur trading history, including Fort Albany First Nation in Ontario and Fort McKay First Nation in Alberta.

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  • Article

    Histoire du Canada depuis sa découverte jusqu'à nos jours

    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.

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  • Article

    Karluk

    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.

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  • Article

    Land God Gave to Cain

    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.

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  • Article

    Mémoires de l'Amérique septentrionale

    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.

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  • Article

    Mer de l'Ouest

    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.

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  • Macleans

    Preserving St. Roch

    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.This article was originally published in Maclean's Magazine on May 11, 1998

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    https://d2ttikhf7xbzbs.cloudfront.net/media/Categories_Placeholders/Dreamstime/dreamstimemaximum_50978204207_1.jpg Preserving St. Roch
  • Article

    Red River Expedition of 1870

    The Red River Expedition (May–August 1870) was a military expedition to oversee the transfer of territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) to Canada and the transition of power from Louis Riel’s provisional government to one headed by the new lieutenant-governor of Manitoba. The expedition was led by Garnet Joseph Wolseley.

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