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Show 4539 Freeman- D 2558 Half of that route was through Canada. That was my second experience in Canada. Summer before last I was working on what was to be a book covering the earlier explorations and the present- day status of the development of North Canada -- The Nearing North. I went to Edmunton, and from there to the Peace river, up that river by the regular Hudson Bay steamer; then I endeavored to pass through Peace river canyon, which Mackenzie had endeavored to boat in 1793 with a birch bark canoe. There had been no record of the point he reached in the canyon. I took a birch bark canoe with an out- board motor, and after losing the boat and the motor and getting very wet and scratched up, I finally located, I thought, the point which Mackenzie had to leave Rocky Mountain canyon and portage. That was my experience on the Peace river. Returning to Edmunton by rail I went on to a waterways boat there; I took a steamer down the Ethabasca and the Slave and the Mackenzie to tidewater, following Mackenzie's route. I returned by steamer and by rail to Edmunton. Then I voyaged down the Saskatchewan river, again on the route of the old explorers, in a folding canvas boat with an out- board motor. This carried me to the Pas, from whence I portaged to the Nelson river, which I boated down to Hudson Bay. |
