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Two of the most common questions I receive from listeners and social media followers are:
What is your favourite historical period?
Who is your favourite historical figure?
In terms of my answers, they are invariably linked to each other.
While I am fascinated by the pre-colonial era, it is Canada’s fur trade era of the 1700s that truly scratches my history itch.
As for my favourite historical figure, there are so many to choose from, but one reigns above all others for me.
This person mapped out a huge part of Western Canada, creating maps so accurate they were still being used into the 20th century.
He spent so much time looking at the night sky with his surveying instruments that the Indigenous Peoples called him The Man Who Looks at Stars.
His story is one of towering highs, and crushing lows.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I am looking at the life of David Thompson!
[TRANSITION]
David Thompson was born on April 30, 1770, in Westminster, Middlesex to Welsh immigrants David and Ann Thompson.
When David was two, his father died, leaving his mother Ann to care for the family.
His mother did what she could but there was little in the way of a social safety net at the time, and without a husband her options were limited when it came to finances.
With no other choice, she put David into the Grey Coat Hospital in London in 1777 so he could receive a better education.
Opened in 1698, Grey Coat was a school for orphaned and poor children. The school provided an education and David learned basic mathematics, reading and other skills that served him well later in his life.
David did well enough in his schooling that the treasurer of Grey Coat, unnamed in my research, decided to help him become an apprentice with the Hudson’s Bay Company. The treasurer paid £5 for David’s admission into the company, and on May 28, 1784, David left England to begin his new life in Canada.
Under the requirements of the company, David was made an indentured servant, primarily doing the work of a clerk and general labourer in one of the company’s forts along the coast of Hudson Bay.
On Sept. 2, 1784, David arrived at Churchill River Post, located at the present-site of Churchill, Manitoba on the coast of Hudson Bay.
During his life at the orphanage, David didn’t have much, but it was more than he was to have at Churchill River Post. He wrote,
“A small room was allotted to me without the least article of furniture but a hard bed for the night. My fellow clerks were in the same situation. They were not comfortable, but resigned, and I had to become so.”
For the first ten days of David’s new life in Canada, there was a lot of hustle and bustle. The supplies from the ship he arrived on were unloaded, and when that was done, the ship was reloaded with furs collected from the Indigenous Peoples over the past year.
When everything was finished and the ship left, David saw just how remote and isolated he was from the life he knew.
He wrote,
“While the ship remained at anchor, my parent and friends appeared only a few weeks’ distance but when the ship sailed and from the top of the rocks I lost sight of her, the distance became immeasurable and I bid a long and sad goodbye to my noble, my sacred country, an exile forever.”
His first job was to copy out the personal papers of Samuel Hearne, the governor of Churchill River Post and a legendary explorer in his own right.
Copying out the papers was tedious, but the work sparked an interest in David to discover more about this continent he now called home.
The papers were compiled into the book A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort In Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean.
The book chronicled the three journeys taken by Hearne, when he became the first known person to walk from Hudson Bay to the Arctic Ocean from 1770 to 1772.
When David wasn’t working on copying the personal papers, he was getting the fort ready for the harsh Hudson Bay winter. He wrote,
“All of our movements more, or less, were for self-preservation: all the wood that could be collected for fuel, gave us only one fire in the morning and another in the evening.”
After a year at Churchill, David was transferred to York Factory, 225 kilometres to the south along the Hudson Bay coast in 1785.
He made the journey on foot, and was joined by two Indigenous men. This was his first time living off the land and sleeping under the stars. It took two weeks to make the journey as the three ate ducks and geese, while avoiding polar bears.
David soon impressed his superiors in the Hudson’s Bay Company with his intelligence, working knowledge of the Cree language and resourcefulness when in the wilderness.
In 1786, David was sent to Cumberland House, located 700 kilometres to the southwest of York Factory near the present-day location of Flin Flon, Manitoba.
The journey was not a stroll through the beautiful countryside for David. It was a backbreaking journey, and with his rank in the company being so low, he took on much of the grunt work that was made worse by buzzing pests. He wrote,
“The labour is not more than common but rendered dreadful by the torment of mosquitoes.”
It was on this journey he first came across the French-Canadian voyageurs that worked for the North West Company. Unlike his own group, they seemed to be happy, singing as they paddled, with a large load of furs.
He wrote of their appearance,
“The men were all French-Canadians, with long red or blue caps, half of which hung down the head. They wore grey capots, or blanket coats, belted round their waist, their trousers of grey cloth or dressed leather, and their shoes of the same.”
David spent his summer at Cumberland House, and then left in September with 14 others to establish South Branch House, north of present-day Saskatoon.
He returned to Cumberland House in the spring of 1787.
It was at Cumberland House that David had a life-changing experience.
In a dream, he stated that the devil visited him. In his journal, he wrote,
“I was sitting at a small table with the checkerboard before me, when the devil sat down opposite to me.”
According to David, they played, and the devil lost each game. He wrote,
“He got up or rather disappeared. My eyes were open as it was broad daylight. I looked around. All was silence and solitude, was it a dream or was it reality. I could not decide.”
Never one for religion before, David became a devout Christian from that moment on.
Later in 1787, David was sent to on his longest journey yet, to the Alberta foothills to meet with the Piikani people.
The Hudson’s Bay Company hoped to establish trading relations with the Piikani, with the help of the Cree serving as intermediaries.
On the journey, David met Saukamappee, an 80-year-old elder who told him about the Indigenous people of the Canadian West. He told David that smallpox had killed hundreds of his people, including an entire enemy band who died before the Piikani people could do a nighttime raid. When the Piikani took the possessions from the enemy camp, the smallpox spread to them. Saukamappee told David,
“We had no belief that one man could give it to another, any more than a wounded man could give his wound to another. We shall never be again the same people.”
The experience had a deep impact on David, who would become an acute and sympathetic observer and ally to the Indigenous, in a time when many Europeans saw them as a savage people.
On the journey west, David viewed the Rocky Mountains for the first time. For someone who grew up in England and now lived close to Hudson Bay, they were awe-inspiring. He wrote,
“The Rocky Mountains came in sight like shining white clouds in the horizon. As we proceeded, they rose in height, their immense masses of snow appeared above the clouds and formed an impassable barrier, even to the eagle.”
He wintered with the Piikani and was introduced to their war chief Kootanae Appee. When he met the war chief, he committed a cultural gaffe that could have gone very wrong for David. When Kootanae was introduced to him, David extended his right hand, a gesture the Piikani viewed as an invitation to fight. In a fight, the young David would have no chance against the seasoned warrior Kootanae.
Thankfully, Kootanae knew that David was not trying to fight him and laughed off the misunderstanding.
Saukamappee then requested that Kootanae protect David during his time in Piikani territory, to which Kootanae agreed.
Kootanae kept his word and protected David during his time with the Piikani, but after they parted, David would suffer the worst injury of his life and it changed his entire future.
[PAUSE]
On Dec. 23, 1788, David was at Pine Island Fort, located on an island in the North Saskatchewan River east of present-day Lloydminster. While working outside, he fell down an embankment and seriously fractured his tibia. It was not detailed how serious the injury was, but it was likely a compound fracture.
It took hours for his fellow travelers to find him and carry him back to the fort. By this point, his leg was swelling severely and not healing properly.
Such an injury could be fatal or crippling at the time.
It took three months before David could even get out of bed, and five months before he was able to walk with the help of crutches.
When a fur brigade was heading to York Factory six months after the injury, David went with them. Unable to walk beyond a few steps, he was as much cargo as passenger in the boat. The plan was to take him to York Factory for transport back to England.
It seemed as though his Canadian adventure was over, but the pain of the journey was so bad for David that he was unloaded at Cumberland House, the next post down the river. He spent the rest of the summer in bed.
The long recovery would have driven some people mad. No one would have called it a blessing in disguise, but David did. He wrote,
“By the mercy of God, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Instead of doing nothing, he expanded his mind and began to learn everything he could about astronomy, mathematics and surveying. He was helped in his studies by Hudson’s Bay Company surveyor Philip Turnor.
Turnor was very impressed with David and wrote to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s directors in London,
“I have inserted some Observations which were made and worked by Your Honours’ unfortunate apprentice, David Thompson. I am fully convinced they are genuine, and should he ever recover his strength far enough to be capable of undertaking expeditions I think Your Honours may rely on his reports of the situation of any place he may visit.”
Through those two years of recovery, David spent so much time studying the stars through a sextant, that he went blind in one eye.
In the early spring of 1790, two years after he broke his leg, David took 41 astronomical fixes at Cumberland House. Feeling competent enough as a surveyor, he recorded the first description of the outpost’s longitude and latitude. His reading was extremely exact and has not been changed by modern surveyors and equipment in the past two centuries.
Following his two year recovery, David was sent to York Factory to continue his apprenticeship, which was fast coming to an end.
Traditionally, when an apprentice reached the end of their time with the Hudson’s Bay Company, they were given a pair of fine clothes as a parting gift.
David asked if instead of fine clothes, he could receive surveying tools.
The Hudson’s Bay Company gave him both the clothes and the tools, and offered him a three-year contract with the company worth £15 per year.
David promptly said yes.
Blind in one eye, and with a permanent limp, David was about to embark on his journey to become one of the greatest surveyors and explorers in history.
[PAUSE]
In 1792, David began his first significant survey. The company tasked him with furthering the research on the waterways leading to Lake Athabasca, which was started by Philip Turnor the year previous.
Lake Athabasca is located on the present-day border of northern Alberta and Saskatchewan and was first explored by Sir Alexander Mackenzie in the 1780s.
In 1793, David completed 34 observations of the longitude of Cumberland House using lunar distances. To accomplish this, he spent three hours on each calculation of his observations, which created a mean error factor far below what was thought possible at the time.
In the autumn of 1794, he was asked to survey the waterways between the Nelson and Churchill Rivers in present-day Manitoba, which was a growing area of competition for the Hudson’s Bay Company with the rival North West Company.
The North West Company was founded in Montreal in 1779 as a rival to the monopoly held by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Whereas the Hudson’s Bay Company kept its forts along Hudson Bay and traded with the Indigenous Peoples who came directly to the forts, the North West Company did things differently.
The company went into the interior of Canada and traded with the Indigenous Peoples before they could journey to Hudson Bay. To divert trade away from the Hudson’s Bay Company, the North West Company began building forts in the interior of the continent, making it easier for the Indigenous Peoples to trade with them.
This caused the Hudson’s Bay Company to alter how it did business and the company began to establish forts and trading posts within the continent.
In his surveys of the waterways between the Nelson and Churchill Rivers, David established a fort at Sipiwesk Lake, and then surveyed a route to Churchill by way of the Burntwood River.
Thanks to this work, David was promoted to surveyor in 1794 and given a raise to £60 per year.
On July 18, 1794, he left York Factory and stayed in Churchill for the winter. For the next two years, he surveyed the land from Churchill to York Factory with the aid of two Chipewyan guides, and then returned to York Factory for the winter of 1796.
Everything was going well for David. He was in a job he loved, that gave him the freedom he craved.
But, in 1797, everything came to a halt.
[PAUSE]
David Thompson lived to survey. It was all he wanted to do, and for him the fur trade was secondary.
That was not the case for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and as talented as David was, they wanted him to focus more on trading furs rather than just mapping rivers.
In early-1797, the Hudson’s Bay Company ordered David to stop surveying and focus completely on the fur trade. To entice him, they offered him the role as Master to the Northward where his primary duties would be the fur trade. This was a huge promotion for someone who was only 27.
David refused the promotion outright.
The fur trade did not interest him, and if he could not survey, he would not work for the Hudson’s Bay Company. He saw the promotion as nothing more than a desk job.
On May 23, 1797, he ceased his employment with the Hudson’s Bay Company and walked 130 kilometres through a late-spring snowstorm to the nearest North West Company fort. When he arrived, he was immediately hired as a surveyor.
David wrote in his journal,
“This day left the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company and entered that of the Company of Merchants from Canada. May God Almighty prosper me.”
Now an employee of the North West Company, he was sent to survey part of the Canada-US boundary along the water routes from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods. This was important because it would solve any unresolved questions that existed over the Jay Treaty that had been signed between England and the United States in 1794.
The North West Company also needed to know which of its forts were on the American side of the border.
He was told by the company that he was to mark the line of the 49th parallel of latitude wherever he could, especially in the Red River area of present-day Manitoba.
The North West Company sent messages ahead to forts that David was to receive any men he needed, and any supplies he requested. He was also told to catalogue Indigenous villages, and record what he could of the inhabitants who lived there in the hopes they could become trading partners.
It was a big change from how he dealt with the Hudson’s Bay Company. David wrote,
“How very different the liberal and public spirit of this North West Company of Merchants of Canada. From the mean, selfish policy of the Hudson’s Bay Company styled honorable, and whom, at little expense, might have had the northern part of this continent surveyed to the Pacific Ocean.”
On Aug. 9, 1797, he left Grand Portage in what is now Minnesota, with a fur trade brigade and journeyed west. In present-day Manitoba, he travelled to the various trading posts and took fixes of their positions. He sent a cursory map to the North West Company back east, and then left with a group of nine other men to travel to the confluence of the Souris River and Assiniboine River.
Unfortunately, by this point it was November and the cold weather slammed the party as they journeyed along the 49th Parallel. Temperatures fell to -35 C.
After 33 days, they reached a Mandan village in what is now North Dakota and David catalogued the village, the people and recorded a vocabulary of 375 words.
For the next three weeks, David fixed the positions of North West Company forts in the area, and discovered several of the forts were on the southern side of the 49th Parallel and would have to move out of the United States.
Through the winter, he continued to survey along the 49th Parallel, while slowly making his way back to Grand Portage. Along the way he completed the first chart of the shoreline of Lake Superior.
In his journey of 1797-98, David covered 6,440 kilometres and showed that the North West Company had to abandon several posts and relocate its western headquarters from Grand Portage. That was accomplished in 1803 when Fort Kaministiquia was established on the northern shore of Lake Superior.
Today, we know that place under a different name, Thunder Bay.
[BEAT]
The following year, David travelled up the Upper Churchill River, to the Beaver River, and along the Red Deer River to establish the trading post of Lac La Biche, which is still located in present-day east-central Alberta.
After the fort was established, he took the North Saskatchewan River to the Athabasca River, and then the Pembina River.
While he was in the area surveying, he married Charlotte Small on June 10, 1799.
These types of country marriages were very common at the time, involving a European man and an Indigenous woman. Unfortunately, they often ended with the European abandoning his wife and family when his contract with the Hudson’s Bay Company or North West Company was over.
That would not be the case for David and Charlotte, who remained married for 58 years, the longest-known pre-Confederation marriage in Canadian history.
To learn more about the amazing life of Charlotte Small, I encourage you to listen to my episode about her from 2023.
Following their marriage, David and Charlotte spent the next year at Rocky Mountain House in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
This was David’s second sight of the mountains, he wrote,
“Here we had a grand view of the Rocky Mountains, forming a concave segment of a circle. All its snowy cliffs to the southward were bright with the beams of the sun, while the most northern were darkened by a tempest, which spent its force only on the summits.”
When trader Duncan McGillivray arrived at Rocky Mountain House, he and David left for a journey south on Nov. 17, 1800. They covered the 270 kilometres into Piikani territory in just six days. After meeting with the Piikani to agree to trading terms, they turned west and travelled towards present-day Banff. There, they scaled a mountain to get a lay of the land, where David wrote,
“Our view from the heights and eastward was vast and unbounded. The eye had not strength to discriminate its termination to the westward hills and rocks rose to our view covered with snow, here rising, there subsiding, but their tops nearly of an equal height everywhere.”
The men then returned to Rocky Mountain House where they spent the winter.
In 1802, Thompson returned to Montreal for a meeting with the North West Company directors. It was there he met a British geologist named John Jeremiah Bigsby who provides us with one of the few descriptions of David Thompson,
He stated,
“He was plainly dressed, quiet and observant. His figure was short and compact, and his black hair was worn long all round, and cut square, as if by one stroke of the shears, just above the eyebrows. His complexion was of the gardener’s ruddy brown, while the expression of his deeply furrowed features was friendly and intelligent, but his cut-short nose gave him an odd look.”
Bigsby became close friends with David and travelled with him for a time. He said of him,
“No living person possesses a tithe of his information respecting the Hudson’s Bay countries. Never mind his Bunyan-like face and cropped hair, he has a very powerful mind and a singular faculty of picture making.”
To reward David for his work with the company, the North West Company made him a full partner on July 10, 1804. He received two of the 92 shares in the company, worth £4,000 pounds.
As happy as David was to receive the recognition and increased pay, he was growing dissatisfied with his role in the company. Since 1802, he had spent more time out east in Montreal than out west in the wilderness. His duties as a partner meant more meetings, and less surveying.
He was giving serious thought to retiring from the company, but in 1806, a decision was made by the company that began David’s greatest journey.
[PAUSE]
In 1806, the North West Company was growing anxious about the overland expedition to the Pacific Coast by Lewis and Clark.
That expedition began on May 14, 1804, and lasted 862 days until Sept. 23, 1806. The journey took the two men and their party from the east coast of the United States, through the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase, to the Pacific Coast.
The North West Company wanted to establish forts on the other side of the Rocky Mountains in present-day British Columbia to prevent American expansion, and it was to David Thompson they looked to achieve that gateway to a new territory.
On May 10, 1807, David left on his journey, traveling up the North Saskatchewan River with his wife Charlotte, their three children and seven other men. They wintered at Rocky Mountain House, before venturing into the Rocky Mountains.
On June 25, 1807, the party crossed into Rocky Mountains along the border of present-day Alberta and British Columbia.
He wrote in his journal,
“At length, the Rocky Mountains came in sight like shining white clouds on the horizon, but we doubted what our guide said. But as we proceeded, they rose in height, their immense masses of snow appearing above the clouds and formed an impassable barrier, even to the Eagle. May God in His mercy give me to see where the waters of this river flow to the western ocean.”
David and the party descended the Blaeberry River and reached a river he named the Kootana. Today, that river is known as the Columbia River. The river begins south of present-day Invermere, British Columbia, moves north and then turns south running through Revelstoke, Castlegar and Trail until it reaches the US border and winds its way to the Pacific Coast.
David made his way upriver with his party in the hopes of finding Indigenous Peoples with whom he could trade with for food. He and those with him were beginning to starve, he wrote,
“The men were now so weak, that however willing, they had not strength to work and some of them told me that two or three days more of famine would bring them to the ground. They were able to keep alive with some fishing, trading for pemmican with the Kootenai people and the skills of Charlotte Small for snaring small game and harvesting food from berries and other plants.
By the end of August, the food supplies were improving as wildlife became more plentiful. On Oct. 2, with the help of an Indigenous man named Ugly Head, so called for his unruly hair, David reached Columbia Lake, the headwaters of the Columbia River.
David established Kootenai House in the area, and it was there that he and his party, including his wife and children, wintered.
In the spring of 1808, he surveyed the nearby Kootenay River, and then began the journey back to Rocky Mountain House. Along the way, he had a brief scare when his daughter Emma disappeared. She was two years old, and he believed she may have drowned. He wrote,
“We searched all the logjams in the river but to no purpose. At length, Mr. Macdonald found her track going upwards searched all about and at length thank God at 8:30 p.m. found her about one mile off, against a bank of snow.”
On June 25, the group reached Rocky Mountain House, after an absence of over a year.
In 1810, David started to return eastward to Montreal when he was given orders to return to the Rocky Mountains and establish a route all the way to the mouth of the Columbia River.
The North West Company heard John Jacob Astor was sending a ship around South America to establish a fur trading post for the Pacific Fur Company at the estuary of the Columbia River, and they wanted to beat him to it.
With his new orders, David turned around and headed back to the Rocky Mountains.
Despite his love of the wilderness and surveying, David was now approaching 50 and the time outdoors was getting harder on his body. While stopped in Rocky Mountain House, he wrote a letter to his friend Finan McDonald, stating,
“If all goes well and it pleases Good Providence to take care of me, I hope to see you in the civilized world in the autumn of 1812. I am getting tired of such constant hard journeys. For the last 12 months I have spent barely two months under the shelter of a hut, all the rest have been in my tent, and there is little likelihood the next 12 months will be much different.”
Heading into the Rocky Mountains, David could not take the Blaeberry Pass due to a hostile Indigenous Nation occupying the area. He had to find a new route, and that was where the skills of his wife Charlotte came into play.
As David tried to find a river route through the mountains, and only finding failure, she persuaded him to try the Athabasca River. Due to her advice, David made a portage from Rocky Mountain House to near present-day Hinton. He then ascended the Athabasca into the mountains and wintered near what is now Jasper with his party.
In the spring, Charlotte told her husband to go up the Whirlpool River. He once again listened to her advice, and found the Athabasca Pass, which allowed him to go into present-day British Columbia through the mountains.
As he camped at the top of the pass, he wrote,
“My men were not at ease, yet when the night came, they admired he brilliancy of the stars and as one of them said, he thought he could almost touch them with his hand. Many reflections came to my mind. A new world was in a manner before me.”
This pass became a popular route for fur traders until it was replaced with the Yellowhead Pass in the latter part of the 19th century.
From the pass, David and his party began their journey down the Columbia River, towards the Pacific Coast.
In April 1811, he reached Spokane House, near present-day Spokane, Washington. There, he built a new canoe for the last leg of the journey.
He left on July 3, 1811, and proceeded down the rest of the river.
On July 9, 1811, near the entrance of Snake River into the Columbia, David wrote,
“I erected a small pole with a half sheet of paper tied about it with these words. Know hereby this country is claimed by Great Britain and the NW Company from Canada do hereby intent to erect a factory on this place for the commerce of the country.”
At 1 p.m. on July 15, 1811, David reached the partially constructed Fort Astoria. David had arrived two months too late to set up a post for the North West Company.
Gabriel Franchere, who was at Fort Astoria, wrote of the arrival of David Thompson,
“Toward midday we saw a large canoe with a flag displayed at her stern, rounding the point which we called Tongue Point. We knew not who it could be, for we did not soon expect our own party, who were to cross the continent by the route which Captains Lewis and Clark had followed.”
The arrival of David Thompson and his party was a surprise to the men in the fort, but David and his party were welcomed and treated as friends, despite the companies being rivals.
“The flag she bore was the British and her crew was composed of eight Canadian boatmen and voyageurs. A well-dressed man, who appeared to be the commander, was the first to leap ashore and addressing us without ceremony, said that his name was David Thompson and that he was one of the partners of the North West Company.”
David stayed at the fort for just over a week to prepare for his journey back east. Franchere wrote,
“Mr. Thompson kept a regular journal and travelled; I thought more like a geographer than a fur trader. He was provided with a sextant, chronometer and barometer and during a week’s sojourn, which he made at our place, had an opportunity to make several astronomical observations.”
On July 22, 1811, David set off on the Columbia River, joined by a Pacific Fur Company boat before they parted ways as he moved north.
For David, this was the end of an era that began 27 years earlier during his first surveys of the Canadian West. He had accomplished his dream of mapping the west, and he was ready for retirement.
He wrote,
“Thus, I have fully completed the survey of this part of North America from sea to sea, by almost unnumberable astronomical observations have determined the positions of the mountains, lakes, and rivers and other remarkable places of the northern part of this continent, the maps of all of which have been drawn and laid down in geographical position, being now the work of 27 years.”
After wintering at Saleesh House until 1812, David crossed back over the Rockies for the last time and headed towards Montreal where he officially retired from surveying, 17 months after he left the Columbia River estuary.
He retired with a generous pension worth £100 plus a full share of company profits for three years.
Now away from traveling and surveying, David began work on his magnum opus, a giant map that was the summary of a lifetime of surveys. The map covers the area from Lake Superior to the Pacific.
He completed one large map, and another made up of several smaller maps pieced together. The large map was sent to Fort William, where it hung in the Great Hall of the fort for half a century. The other map, three metres long and two metres high, is now in a special cabinet at the Archives of Ontario in Toronto.
The maps was so accurate, it were still being used by the Canadian government a century later.
In 1815, David and the family moved to Williamstown, Upper Canada and lived on a farm he purchased from Reverend John Bethune.
If the last name sounds familiar, that is because his descendant is Dr. Norman Bethune, whom I covered in an episode in 2023.
Dr. Norman Bethune is related to our third Prime Minister Sir John Abbott, who is the great-grandfather of Christopher Plummer.
It also means that David Thompson and his family bought a farm from the great-great-great-great grandfather of Plummer.
Everything in Canadian history is connected.
The love of surveying was still strong in David, even if his body was getting too old for it. From 1815 to 1820, he surveyed the border along the St. Lawrence River towards Sault Ste. Marie, which was established following the War of 1812. It was also a lot closer to civilization, which made things easier.
Following this survey work, he returned to his life as a landowner and became the Justice of the Peace for his region in 1820.
As the 1820s wore on, the financial strength of David and his family began to falter. His shares became worthless in the North West Company when it was absorbed into the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821. Most of his remaining wealth was invested in land, and that made him little in the way of an income. To find income elsewhere, he invested in a potash production company and two general stores, all of which failed.
By 1831, most of David’s money was gone and in 1833 he was so deep in debt that he had to give much of the land he owned over the creditors.
Now in his 60s, David returned to surveying to bring in money for his family. He conducted hydrographic surveys for the British North American Land Company. In 1837, he conducted a survey of the waterways between Lake Huron and the Ottawa River.
Despite his skill, the work was hard on him physically and over the next decade the survey work decreased.
In 1845, he and his family moved to a rented house in Montreal. Money remained tight and the family moved several more times.
In August 1840, at the age of 70, he applied to be a clerk with the Hudson’s Bay Company, the same position he held over five decades earlier. He was turned down.
One of the final jobs for Thompson was surveying the vast estate of fellow explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie.
Eventually, David was forced to sell his precious surveying tools to feed the family and pay the rent.
In David’s final years, he and Charlotte moved in with his daughter and son-in-law to save money. He spent his days working on his journals, consisting of 77 field books. He hoped his work would be published but he found no takers.
In 1851, due to years of looking at his maps in poor light, David went blind.
He spent the last six years of his life as a man lost in his memories of the wilderness he helped to explore.
On Feb. 10, 1857, David Thompson died. Three months later, Charlotte joined him.
That may have been the end of the story, but decades after David died, another man came along to bring his name the glory it deserved.
[PAUSE]
In 1889, geologist J.B. Tyrrell, the same man who found dinosaur fossils in the Alberta badlands, purchased the notes of David Thompson from one of David’s sons. He became enthralled by the narrative and fascinated by the man. He started looking for someone to publish David’s notes from his travels in Western Canada.
Tyrell said of David,
“There were few white men in the West in those early days who bore so consistently as he did the white flower of a blameless life.”
David Thompson’s Narrative was published in 1916 and has remained in print since then.
Tyrell also bought a headstone for David’s unmarked grave in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.
The book brought a new interest in David Thompson, and he was named a National Historic Person in 1926.
Since then, the honours have just kept coming for David.
Historical plaques celebrate Thompson in several places in Alberta and British Columbia. At Lac La Biche, a statue exists to honour when he landed there on Oct. 4, 1798. Other statues and monuments honour him in North Dakota, Montana and British Columbia.
In 1957, Canada Post issued a stamp to honour David Thompson. The David Thompson Highway coming out of Rocky Mountain House was named for him, as was a high school in Leslieville, Alberta. There are also two secondary schools named for him in Invermere and Vancouver.
In 1958, Charles Sandell, the great-grandson of David Thompson, opened the David Thompson Stampede in Rocky Mountain House.
In 2007, a commemorative plaque was placed on the wall of Grey Coat Hospital to honour the time that David attended there.
Today, David is considered by some historians to be the greatest land geographer that the world has ever produced.
But why do I love him?
[TRANSITION]
Going back to my original statement from the beginning of this episode, I said that David Thompson is my favourite historical figure.
Now I am going to explain why.
I have a strong fascination with the fur trade era of Canada. It was a time before there were fences and roads, or cities of concrete peppering the landscape.
You could choose a direction and just walk. I understand that is a romanticized view, as there were many dangers to deal with.
For me, David Thompson represents freedom. Someone who was able to wander the landscape, choosing a direction and moving towards it without being impeded.
When I first watched Canada: A People’s History in 2000, one of the episodes focused on David Thompson and his life.
It outlined the life of The Man Who Looked at Stars, and I was fascinated by it from that moment.
David Thompson was a man who bucked the trends of the day when it came to his interactions with the Indigenous Peoples, and his own marriage to Charlotte. He had honour and integrity.
He was a man who was born into poverty, raised in an orphanage and shipped to a place far from his home. He dealt with hardship and loneliness and suffered a terrible injury.
His life could have taken many paths, but through his own perseverance and drive to be something more, he succeeded in becoming an immortal in Canadian history.
For me, David Thompson represents the proof that you can succeed at something you love, if you put in the work and effort to make it happen. He certainly did.
Information comes from Canadian Encyclopedia, David Thompson Country, Wikipedia, Biographi, Canadian Museum of History, British Columbia From Earliest Times To The Present, Fort Vermilion Before Alberta, The Hudson Bay Road, Days Before Yesterday, The Conquest Of The Great Northwest,
