Northern Waterways Reference Collection

Author: Tyrrell, J. W.

Title: Report on an Exploratory Survey Between Great Slave Lake and Hudson Bay Districts of Mackenzie and Keewatin

Year: 1901

Publisher: Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau

Pages: 125

Source: Barren Lands Digital Collection

Description: "Tyrrell was a surveyor.  He had accompanied his brother J.B., the geologist, on descents of both the Dubawnt and the Kazan just a few years earlier .  But the principle purpose this time was strictly to explore and map, so the Surveyor General in Ottawa called upon J.W.  At the time he received the request, 'in the hands of an Indian courier," the younger Tyrrell was working on a survey of timber lands in northern Ontario.  He lost no time in complying …

"Their wilderness quest began literally at the end of the road 290 kilometres north of Edmonton.  On February 26, 1900, five heavily laden dog-sleds pulled away from the Hudson's Bay Company post, to begin a journey by sled and canoe of 7,360 kilometers.  By early May, after a difficult but ordinary—for the time—trip north, the nine men and about three tons of equipment reached Pike's Portage at the eastern extremity of Great Slave Lake" (Pelly, "Thelon: A River Sanctuary," 1996:16-17, 20).