Alexander Mackenzie was a Scottish fur trader who is known for leading the first east-west expedition across North America north of Mexico. Born in Stornoway, Mackenzie travelled to New York just before the outbreak of the American War of Independence. He moved to Montreal in 1778 where he secured an apprenticeship with one of the fur companies in the city.
The fur trade was Canada’s main industry prior to the nineteenth century. French and Métis traders, known as voyageurs, and their British counterparts took advantage of the vast network of rivers and creeks which led from Hudson’s Bay and the St Lawrence River into the interior of the country to trap animals and sell pelts for use across North America and Europe. Fur trappers travelled along the rivers by canoe, trading and establishing relationships with First Nations, gaining an intimate knowledge of a vast swathe of territory stretching as far west as the modern-day province of Alberta.
In 1787, the company that employed Mackenzie merged with the North West Company, a competitor to the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Mackenzie was sent on an expedition to Lake Athabasca and the trading post at Fort Chipewyan. Believing that the nearby rivers flowed northwest, Mackenzie set out in a canoe in search of the Northwest Passage, a presumed navigable route to the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, the river flowed into the Arctic Ocean, not the Pacific as he had hoped.
Five years later, in 1792, Mackenzie set out on a new expedition from Fort Chipewyan, to reach the Pacific via another navigable route. Accompanied by two Indigenous guides, his cousin, six voyageurs and a dog, Mackenzie travelled up the Peace River, into the Rocky Mountains and across the continental divide to the source of the Fraser River. Informed by the local First Nations that the tribes further along the river were hostile, the expedition was encouraged to follow a trail to the north, across the Coast Mountains of modern-day British Columbia and along the course of the Bella Coola River. Mackenzie reached the Pacific Coast on 20 July 1793, missing the naval expedition of George Vancouver, which had already visited the same area, by just 48 days. Prevented from travelling any further due to a hostile encounter with the Indigenous Heiltsuk, Mackenzie was forced to turn back east.
Mackenzie’s expeditions were a remarkable feat and he published an account of them in 1801, prefaced by an extensive description of the fur trade in Canada. The Royal Library’s copy of the book was acquired by George IV when Prince of Wales and formed a part of the prince’s library at Carlton House.