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Tom Monto

Alexander Mackenzie -- "Alex MacKenzie from Canada by land 22d July 1793"

First person to cross the continent, despite what Lewis and Clarke said.


1793 travelled from Fort Chipewyan to Bella Coola on western coast.


August 1793 returned to Fort Chip, later going back east to Montreal, then to the U.S. and to London.


1801 knighted - Sir Alexander Mackenzie


back in Canada elected to Legislature of Lower Canada (Quebec).

it was election of such high and mighty personages that perhaps led to Papineau's rebellion of 1837.


1801 published the journals of his 1793 trip

see Peel's Prairie Provinces website (as long as that is still in operation anyway)

Voyages from Montreal on the River St. Laurence, through the continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans, in the years 1789 and 1793: With a preliminary account of the rise, progress, and present state of the fur trade of that country.

London: T. Cadell, Jun. & W. Davies, 1801


Shortly after its publication, he presented British government with plan to put posts on west coast and take Canadian furs and trade them to China for spices and other nice things.


His detailed plan of his west coast project --

"Preliminaries to the Establishment of a Permanent British Fishery and Trade in Furs etc. on the Continent and West Coast of North America."


British government, preoccupied with upcoming fight with Napoleon, did nothing.


1801 book:

appears to have no table of contents


around page 407 starts a sketch plan of use of passage across the continent (once a sea-passage had been ruled out by survey of the inner content and the west coast) and the development of posts on the west coast and of trade with China.


p. 411 mentions China (perhaps this is the only mention of the Orient)


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