{"id":4151,"date":"1979-09-01T01:00:00","date_gmt":"1979-09-01T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-60-no-9-september-1979-the-unknown-explorers\/"},"modified":"2022-11-27T23:55:10","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T23:55:10","slug":"vol-60-no-9-september-1979-the-unknown-explorers","status":"publish","type":"rbc_letter","link":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-60-no-9-september-1979-the-unknown-explorers\/","title":{"rendered":"Vol. 60, No. 9 &#8211; September 1979 &#8211; The Unknown Explorers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"layout-column-main\">\n<p class=\"boldtext\">They were the successors of Champlain, Hearne                     and Mackenzie in probing a vast, forbidding land. They toiled                     alone, and few today remember them or their work. To our galaxy                     of great Canadians, let us add the men of the Geological Survey                     of Canada. What we owe them, no one can say&#8230;<\/p>\n<p> <em>&#8220;They were the last white men to see Canada first &#8211;                     as a land still in a large degree unknown. Their main job,                     nominally, was to sound and chart its endless tides of rock,                     but it inevitably fell to them to record its scattered people                     and their life, its birds, and animals, its flowers, trees                     and skies.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>So wrote the distinguished author Ralph Allen in 1962 about                     one of the most heroic and yet least-celebrated bodies of                     men in Canadian history, the men of the Geological Survey                     of Canada. Every schoolboy knows of Champlain and Hudson,                     but few Canadians of any age have even heard of these much                     later explorers who toiled and bled in the trackless solitude                     of the wilderness to give Canada a head start on the road                     to economic viability and scientific prowess.<\/p>\n<p>Their legacy lies in the shafts and pits of some of the                     world&#8217;s richest mines, and in the continuing rewards of the                     flood of investment and immigration that followed their discovery                     of Canada&#8217;s immense mineral resources. And &#8211; just as important                     &#8211; in the hundreds of thousands of bits and pieces of country                     they brought back to Ottawa from strange, wild shores to build                     the backbone of a distinctively Canadian scientific tradition                     that still flourishes today.<\/p>\n<p>They began their monumental work before Canada was even                     a nation, during the era of the old union of the present-day                     Ontario and Quebec. The first of them was William Logan, who                     set an enduring standard not only of scientific accuracy,                     but of eccentricity. He was a rich man who dressed like a                     bum, and was more than once mistaken for an escaped lunatic.                     A short, wiry man with metal-rimmed spectacles and an avuncular,                     dazed, humorous look, he ranged over many thousands of miles                     of wilderness, measuring the Canada of his day by counting                     his own footsteps. He was a flute player, a singer of old                     Scottish songs, a raconteur, <em>bon vivant<\/em>, and a scholar.                     Above all, he was a scientist through-and-through.<\/p>\n<p>Logan was born in Montreal in 1798 of wealthy Scottish parents.                     At 16 he left for school in Edinburgh; he spent 27 years as                     an expatriate before he found his life&#8217;s work and came home                     for good. By that time he had become a geologist, a metallurgist,                     a surveyor, a master cartologist, and a world authority on                     the origins of coal. He had studied five languages, mathematics,                     chemistry and logic. He knew a fair bit about botany, zoology,                     and banking. He had managed a Welsh copper-smelting operation.                     He was a competent landscape artist, a frequent traveller                     on the continent, a social charmer, and a thorough gentleman                     of the old school.<\/p>\n<p>In the early 1840s, he was also a middle-aged man whose                     main chance had come at last. For the Canadian legislature                     at Kingston resolved in 1841 &#8220;that a sum not exceeding one                     thousand five hundred pounds, sterling, be granted to Her                     Majesty to defray the probable expense in causing a Geological                     Survey of the Province to be made&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Now, all the burned midnight oil and scientific preoccupations                     of Logan&#8217;s years as an expatriate suddenly made perfect sense.                     As a later Survey director put it, Logan had trained for the                     job &#8220;as if destined for it by the sure hand of Providence&#8221;.                     Since he was at least as well-connected as he was well qualified,                     it took only till the Spring of &#8217;42 for him to wangle his                     way into the boss&#8217;s chair of the new Geological Survey of                     Canada. There was little staff to boss, however. With only                     one assistant, Logan was responsible not only for geological                     exploration but also for topographical surveying and for nurturing                     the collection that would one day become Canada&#8217;s superb National                     Museum.<\/p>\n<p>He rarely sat in the boss&#8217;s chair anyway. In the 27 years                     during which he ran the Survey, he was on the move indefatigably,                     penetrating into the deepest recesses of the Canadian bush                     and making maps of country no white man had ever seen before.                     He grew into an expert woodsman as he hammered the rocks to                     probe the hidden Eldorado beneath the grim mantle of the Precambrian                     Shield. With his rifle, he bagged fresh meat for whole survey                     crews. With his songs and stories, he entertained them. He                     was never more at home than among the trees, lakes and rivers                     of the great unknown.<\/p>\n<p>A measure of his mettle in this setting comes through in                     a memoir by a companion on one of his expeditions of a stormy                     night on the shores of Lake Huron when Logan lost touch with                     his party. &#8220;Suddenly, a little after day had broken, he was                     perceived emerging from the bush, hammer in hand, occasionally                     pounding a rock as he advanced, and seemingly quite unconcerned,                     though his trousers were torn to rags, and his boots completely                     minus the soles. On asking him how he got through the night,                     he replied with the greatest <em>sang froid<\/em>, &#8216;Very well&#8217;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Not that he was immune to the torments of wilderness travel.                     He complained in his diaries about fly bites, scraped shins,                     and thirst so bad he couldn&#8217;t eat. On the Gasp\u00e9 coast                     in 1843, he shared a small wigwam with one stove, six Indians,                     two dogs and two cats. Outside, he endured &#8220;the abominable                     stench&#8221; of rotting fish offal and putrid whale blubber. &#8220;The                     rain is coming down harder and harder,&#8221; he recorded. &#8220;The                     wind is beginning to blow, the sea to break heavily on the                     shore, and our tent to leak.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Logan continued this arduous life well into his later years.                     He did not retire until 1869, when he was 70, and by that                     time his brilliant work in geology and mapping had made him                     world-renowned. He had accepted a knighthood from Queen Victoria                     and honours from the Emperor of France as easily as he had                     once accepted roast porcupine and porpoise cutlets from friendly                     Gasp\u00e9 Indians. He wore the numerous medals for scientific                     achievement he had amassed with all the natural dignity of                     an archduke.<\/p>\n<h3>Discovering a sudden heritage of vastness and geological                     wealth<\/h3>\n<p>It was time for a younger man to take over. Confederation                     had vastly expanded the Survey&#8217;s role. Far to the west, gigantic                     new territories would soon become part of the new nation.                     Logan&#8217;s successor, selected with his blessing, was a 45-year-old                     Englishman who had once run a similar geological survey in                     Australia, Alfred Selwyn.<\/p>\n<p>Selwyn was a pock-marked, shaggy man so long-legged and                     skinny that his staff called him &#8220;The Tripod&#8221;. He had already                     explored Nova Scotia for gold, iron and coal, penetrated the                     Upper Fraser Valley in British Columbia, and made a 2,300-mile                     loop on the Prairies by Red River cart, buckboard wagon, saddle                     horse and York boat.<\/p>\n<p>He was also a snobbish, aloof and autocratic individual                     whose fiercely critical editing of field reports angered his                     subordinates. They called him &#8220;The Thing&#8221; and &#8220;The Prince                     of Liars&#8221; &#8211; and in time the men he had insulted or fired or                     reprimanded went after his hide.<\/p>\n<p>His flaws as a leader got sensational exposure in 1884 when                     he and those who loathed him turned a Parliamentary hearing                     into a sensational orgy of insult, recrimination and revealed                     vendetta. Still, the Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald,                     stuck by Selwyn. It was not till 1895 that the government                     superannuated the prickly Survey chief.<\/p>\n<p>By then he had been running the show for 26 years. And,                     whatever his underlings thought of him, those years were a                     glorious time for Canadian exploration. His men fanned out                     to measure, map, describe, illustrate, sniff, hammer, probe                     and, in the broadest sense, <em>discover <\/em>Canada&#8217;s sudden                     inheritance of unknown vastness and its geological wealth.                     They journeyed up and down the raging rivers of British Columbia,                     in and out of cold Yukon valleys, over the deadly Barren Lands,                     down to the far islands of Arctic seas, across the perilous                     sterility of Ungava and the pitfalls of Labrador.<\/p>\n<p>With Indians, M\u00e9tis and French-Canadian paddlers                     to help, they covered hundreds of thousands of miles, travelled                     from sea unto sea unto sea, served as Canada&#8217;s advance men                     in the remoteness of her own terrain. Only the native peoples,                     the missionaries, fur traders and a handful of explorers had                     preceded them. Farms, mines, lumber camps, immigrant trains                     and whole cities would follow in their paths.<\/p>\n<h3>The age of the brilliant amateur and the specialist wrapped                     into one<\/h3>\n<p>They linked the age of the brilliant amateur to the age                     of the specialist. Some had university degrees in geology                     but also knew enough natural history to make them astute collectors                     of plants, insects, fish, birds and animals. Others collected                     Indian and Eskimo artifacts, legends and vocabularies, and                     helped found anthropology in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They practised and interested themselves in almost the                     whole gamut of outdoor sciences,&#8221; Survey Director W. H. Collins                     wrote in 1926, &#8220;and their reports are storehouses of information                     regarding the topography, climate, fauna and flora, and native                     people, as well as the geology and mineral resources.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Robert Bell, who once described Selwyn as &#8220;ignorant, incompetent,                     and unscrupulous,&#8221; was a classic example of the multi-talented                     Survey explorer of the late 19th century. A bitter intriguer                     in Ottawa who had led the campaign to have Selwyn deposed,                     he was a jack-of-all disciplines. In 1857, when he was 15,                     he explored the Saguenay country for the Survey and brought                     back an outstanding botanical collection. He earned degrees                     in both engineering and medicine, and he once taught chemistry.                     He was a photographer, taxidermist, map-maker, and something                     of an astronomer. He was also among the first Survey explorers                     to collect Indian folklore. Bell tramped over more of Canada                     than any other man of his time and reported knowledgeably                     not only on mineralogy and geology but also on soil, seeds,                     crops, forests, water power, wildlife, vegetation, climate                     and ethnology.<\/p>\n<h3>In three days, a twin bonanza of dinosaur                     skeletons and                     coal<\/h3>\n<p>Such men sometimes drifted into the Survey because they                     loved the wilderness or felt the magnetism of the frontier                     or, at any rate, for reasons that hadn&#8217;t much to do with their                     schooling. As a boy, Joseph Tyrrell kept a private zoo of                     creatures he had captured on the banks of Toronto&#8217;s Humber                     River. He was training to become a lawyer when a doctor told                     him that, for the sake of his bad lungs, he should take to                     the woods. Tyrrell quit law, joined the Survey, and began                     his fantastic life as an explorer, historical scholar, mining                     tycoon, and survivor. He died full of honours at 99, having                     once declared, &#8220;It&#8217;s a man&#8217;s duty to live as long as he can.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As Pierre Berton wrote in <em>Great Canadians <\/em>(The                     Canadian Centennial Library, Toronto, 1965) it was Tyrrell                     who, &#8220;in the space of three quite incredible days in June                     of 1884, discovered first the dinosaur skeletons in Alberta&#8217;s                     Red Deer Valley, and secondly a seam of bituminous coal on                     the present site of Drumheller. The first discovery was the                     single most important find of its kind on the continent; those                     priceless old bones grace the major museums of our time. The                     second discovery unearthed the largest coal deposit in Canada.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>George Mercer Dawson was a hunchback midget by comparison                     with the burly Tyrrell. Dawson survived only until he was                     52. He was no taller than a boy of 12, and his lungs were                     so poor even common colds threatened to kill him. He was nevertheless                     one of the toughest, most tireless and daring of all the tough,                     tireless and daring Survey explorers. Literally dwarf-like,                     he was figuratively a giant among both the explorers and scientists                     of 19th-century Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Dawson wrote articles not only on several fields of geology                     but also on botany, zoology, history and anthropology. He                     was an artist, poet, lecturer, teacher, diplomat and, on any                     mountain trail, a martinet. In 1877, he covered thousands                     of miles of mountainous country in British Columbia without                     a map. He made his own as he went along. The gold rush capital                     of Dawson City was named after him. When he died, the <em>British                     Columbia Mining Record <\/em>eulogized &#8220;the little doctor&#8221;                     in verse. (&#8220;And tell him the boys he worked for, say, judging                     as best they can\/That in lands which try manhood hardest,                     he was tested and proved A Man.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<h3>When pickings were lean, a menu of seagull,                     marmot and polar                     bear<\/h3>\n<p>In Bell&#8217;s eyes, Dawson was as hateful an interloper as Selwyn,                     but Bell had something in common with the little doctor, an                     eagerness to rough it in the bush. In the case of Survey explorers,                     &#8220;to rough it&#8221; was a euphemism. They performed feats of outdoor                     endurance that are scarcely believable in the age of comfort.                     They travelled by foot, dog team, Prairie schooner, cart,                     raft, pack-horse, mule train and canoes made of wood, bark                     or canvas. Their very survival amidst the endless perils of                     the wilds depended on their skills as woodsmen. R. G. McConnell,                     alone in the mountainous heart of British Columbia, patched                     his leaky boat with a mixture of sperm-oil candles, spruce-gum,                     bacon grease and gun oil.<\/p>\n<p>Tyrrell had learned to shoot shortly after learning to walk.                     He was a shot-gun marksman from either shoulder and, with                     a rifle, could knock the head off a partridge from 100 feet                     away. He could snuff out a candle from 20 paces with a hand-gun.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks mostly to Tyrrell, the men on the epic, gruelling                     and all-but-fatal foray into the Barren Lands in 1893 dined                     on deer, caribou, rabbit, ptarmigan, duck and, when pickings                     were lean, seagulls, squirrels, marmots and a polar bear.                     Polar bear, he said, tasted like beefsteak fried in cod liver                     oil, and eating the bear&#8217;s liver almost killed his brother                     James.<\/p>\n<p>Though politicians chastised the Survey for its wastefulness,                     the field parties lived largely off the land and their leaders                     were Scrooge-like. Half a century after Bell&#8217;s heyday as an                     explorer, Survey staff still talked of his &#8220;celebration&#8221; to                     end a tough season&#8217;s work. For weeks, his men had lived on                     beans and bannock. Then they approached civilization again                     and pitched camp near a store. Bell went to the store, returned,                     and told the cook, &#8220;Joe, the boys have had a long, hard trip.                     They&#8217;ve worked well. They deserve a treat. Here&#8217;s a can of                     tomatoes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Nor were unpredictable menus the worst the explorers endured.                     In the autumn of 1893, Tyrrell and his men came within hours                     of losing their lives in a slow, agonizing, foodless southbound                     race against winter on Hudson Bay. Spray froze on their beards,                     ice sheathed canoes and paddles and, until the strongest of                     them staggered into Churchill, it appeared certain that if                     starvation didn&#8217;t get them the weather would.<\/p>\n<p>The explorers put up with danger, dirt, pain, loneliness,                     and unfriendly Indians. They left their families for months                     on end. Their pay was only half what they would have earned                     if they had quit the Survey, and some did quit. Those who                     stayed did so partly because, each year, the Survey plunged                     them back among the astounding sights and tantalizing mysteries                     of Canada&#8217;s farthest frontiers.<\/p>\n<p>It was with rich memories that, each November, the geologists                     swarmed back to Ottawa. They spent the winter working on their                     reports, swapping stories, grouching about their salaries                     and, in some cases, cursing the boss. They waited for springtime                     when, once again, they would have the weather, the authorization,                     and the funds to answer the call of the wild. No men ever                     did more to tell the world about Canada or, for that matter,                     to tell Canada about Canada. And no one can measure how much                     we Canadians owe to them today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[1],"rbc_letter_theme":[],"rbc_letter_year":[59],"class_list":["post-4151","rbc_letter","type-rbc_letter","status-publish","hentry","category-uncategorized","rbc_letter_year-59"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Vol. 60, No. 9 - September 1979 - The Unknown Explorers - RBC<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-60-no-9-september-1979-the-unknown-explorers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vol. 60, No. 9 - September 1979 - The Unknown Explorers - RBC\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"They were the successors of Champlain, Hearne and Mackenzie in probing a vast, forbidding land. 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They toiled alone, and few today remember them or their work. To our galaxy of great Canadians, let us add the men of the Geological Survey of Canada. 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September 1979 &#8211; The Unknown Explorers","url":"http:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-60-no-9-september-1979-the-unknown-explorers\/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/about-us\/history\/letter\/vol-60-no-9-september-1979-the-unknown-explorers\/"},"thumbnailUrl":"","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":""},"articleSection":"Uncategorized","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"amandeepsingh"}],"creator":["amandeepsingh"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"RBC","logo":""},"keywords":[],"dateCreated":"1979-09-01T01:00:00Z","datePublished":"1979-09-01T01:00:00Z","dateModified":"2022-11-27T23:55:10Z"},"rendered":"<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"wp-parsely-metadata\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"NewsArticle\",\"headline\":\"Vol. 60, No. 9 &#8211; September 1979 &#8211; The Unknown Explorers\",\"url\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.rbc.com\\\/en\\\/about-us\\\/history\\\/letter\\\/vol-60-no-9-september-1979-the-unknown-explorers\\\/\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\\\/\\\/www.rbc.com\\\/en\\\/about-us\\\/history\\\/letter\\\/vol-60-no-9-september-1979-the-unknown-explorers\\\/\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"url\":\"\"},\"articleSection\":\"Uncategorized\",\"author\":[{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"name\":\"amandeepsingh\"}],\"creator\":[\"amandeepsingh\"],\"publisher\":{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"name\":\"RBC\",\"logo\":\"\"},\"keywords\":[],\"dateCreated\":\"1979-09-01T01:00:00Z\",\"datePublished\":\"1979-09-01T01:00:00Z\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-11-27T23:55:10Z\"}<\/script>","tracker_url":"https:\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/rbc.com\/p.js"},"featured_img":false,"coauthors":[],"author_meta":{"author_link":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/author\/amandeepsingh\/","display_name":"amandeepsingh"},"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 47 years ago","modified":"Updated 3 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on September 1, 1979","modified":"Updated on November 27, 2022"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on September 1, 1979 1:00 am","modified":"Updated on November 27, 2022 11:55 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","tax_additional":{"category":{"linked":["<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/category\/uncategorized\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Uncategorized<\/a>"],"unlinked":["<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Uncategorized<\/span>"],"slug":"category","name":"Categories"},"rbc_letter_theme":{"linked":[],"unlinked":[],"slug":"rbc_letter_theme","name":"Themes"},"rbc_letter_year":{"linked":["<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/year\/1979\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">1979<\/a>"],"unlinked":["<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">1979<\/span>"],"slug":"rbc_letter_year","name":"Years"}},"series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rbc_letter\/4151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rbc_letter"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rbc_letter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rbc_letter\/4151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4151"},{"taxonomy":"rbc_letter_theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rbc_letter_theme?post=4151"},{"taxonomy":"rbc_letter_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rbc.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rbc_letter_year?post=4151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}