Ripcord Adventure Journal 1.3 Second Edition

John Rae: Arctic explorer
Ken McGoogan
that killed two men.
In the spring, realizing he was well-suited to “the wild sort of life”
available with the HBC, he signed on to serve two years as a
Company doctor—and ended up remaining at Moose Factory, the
HBC’s second largest fur-trading post, for more than a decade. He
mastered canoeing, snow-shoeing, and native methods of hunting,
trapping, and catching game. Still in his twenties, Rae became
legendary as a survivalist and snowshoe walker. Once, making a
long-distance home call, he covered 104 miles in two days --
seventy-four on the second.
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In 1844, Rae convinced the governor of the Hudson's Bay
Company, George Simpson, that he was the man to complete the
geographical survey of the Arctic coast of North America—part of
the continuing, centuries-old quest for a Northwest Passage. The
following year, after wintering at York Factory in Hudson Bay, Rae
led a dozen men north in two 22-foot sailboats. At Repulse Bay, he
became the first European to winter in the High Arctic (above the
tree line) while relying mainly on his own resources rather than on
imported provisions.
The explorer tells that story in Narrative of an Expedition to the
Shores of the Arctic Sea, republished in 2012 as part of The Arctic
Journals of John Rae. In that work, Rae describes how, having spent
the winter in a rough stone house, he traveled northwest with five
men and two dogsleds, sleeping in igloos as he went. After reaching
Lord Mayor's Bay, which John Ross had discovered by sea from the
north, he returned to Repulse Bay. With four men, Rae then trekked
to the west coast of Melville Peninsula, battling fierce winds,
drifting snow, and hummocky ice to come within a few miles of
Fury and Hecla Strait, so named by Royal Navy explorer William
Edward Parry.
On this expedition, Rae charted 655 miles of new land and coastline.
He demonstrated that “Boothia Felix” was a peninsula, confirmed
that no channel or passage led west out of Hudson Bay, and
established a reputation as an Arctic pioneer. The chief hunter of
every expedition he led, Rae was the first European to adopt the
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