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James Sinclair (fur Trader)
James Sinclair (1811 – March 26, 1856) was a trader and explorer with the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). He twice led large parties of settlers from the Red River Colony to the Columbia River valley. These were both authorized by the HBC as a part of grandiose plans to strengthen British claims in the Oregon boundary dispute. Early life James Sinclair was born in 1811 in Rupert's Land. His mother was a Cree woman named Nahovway, his father was William Sinclair, a HBC factor from Eastaquoy in Harray, and his brother was William Sinclair, Jr. He was educated in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh. Red River colonists James Sinclair was appointed by Duncan Finlayson to guide the settler families to Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. Most of the families were Métis, headed by men who were capable hunters and well-suited to living off the land. They were hired by the Pugets Sound Agricultural Company (PSAC) to settle at company stations in modern Washington state as agricu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rupert's Land
Rupert's Land (french: Terre de Rupert), or Prince Rupert's Land (french: Terre du Prince Rupert, link=no), was a territory in British North America which comprised the Hudson Bay drainage basin; this was further extended from Rupert's Land to the Pacific coast in December 1821. It was established to be a commercial monopoly by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), based at York Factory. The territory operated for 200 years from 1670 to 1870. Its namesake was Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who was a nephew of Charles I and the first governor of HBC. The areas formerly belonging to Rupert's Land lie mostly within what is today Canada, and included the whole of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, southern Nunavut, and northern parts of Ontario and Quebec. Additionally, it also extended into areas that would eventually become part of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. The southern border west of Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains was the drainage divide between th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fort Garry
Fort Garry, also known as Upper Fort Garry, was a Hudson's Bay Company trading post at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in what is now downtown Winnipeg. It was established in 1822 on or near the site of the North West Company's Fort Gibraltar established by John Wills in 1810 and destroyed by Governor Semple's men in 1816 during the Pemmican War. Fort Garry was named after Nicholas Garry, deputy governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. It served as the centre of fur trade within the Red River Colony. In 1826, a severe flood destroyed the fort. It was rebuilt in 1835 by the HBC and named Upper Fort Garry to differentiate it from "the Lower Fort," or Lower Fort Garry, 32 km downriver, which was established in 1831. Throughout the mid-to-late 19th century, Upper Fort Garry played a minor role in the actual trading of furs, but was central to the administration of the HBC and the surrounding settlement. The Council of Assiniboia, the administrative and judicia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radium Hot Springs
Radium Hot Springs, informally and commonly called Radium, is a village of 1,339 residents situated in the East Kootenay region of British Columbia. The village is named for the hot springs located in the nearby Kootenay National Park. From Banff, Alberta, it is accessible via Highway 93. The hot springs were named after the radioactive element when an analysis of the water showed that it contained small traces of radon which is a decay product of radium. The radiation dosage from bathing in the pools is inconsequential; approximately from the water for a half-hour bathing, around ten times average background levels. The air concentration of radon is about which is higher than the level () at which mitigation within two years is encouraged at residences; but is also inconsequential (about for a half-hour bathing) from a dose impact perspective. Geography Radium is located 16 km north of the tourist town of Invermere, and 105 km south of Golden, British Columbia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kootenai River
The Kootenay or Kootenai river is a major river in the Northwest Plateau, in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, and northern Montana and Idaho in the United States. It is one of the uppermost major tributaries of the Columbia River, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Kootenay River runs from its headwaters in the Kootenay Ranges of the Canadian Rockies, flowing from British Columbia's East Kootenay region into northwestern Montana, then west into the northernmost Idaho Panhandle and returning to British Columbia in the West Kootenay region, where it joins the Columbia at Castlegar. The river is known as the Kootenay in Canada and by the Ktunaxa Nation, and Kootenai in the United States and by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. Fed mainly by glaciers and snow melt, the river drains a rugged, sparsely populated region of more than ; over 70 percent of the basin is in Canada. From its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cross River (British Columbia)
The Cross River is a tributary of the Kootenay River in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is part of the Columbia River basin, as the Kootenay River is tributary to the Columbia River. The history regarding this river and Whiteman's Pass across the Continental Divide begins with James Sinclair leading a party of Red River immigrants through the pass in 1841. They left Fort Garry (now the city of Winnipeg) in 1841 with 23 families, including a 75-year-old woman, with an aim to settle in the Oregon Country to reinforce British claims to the area. After a brief stop at Fort Edmonton, he was guided by Maskepetoon, the chief of the Wetaskiwin Cree, via Lake Minnewanka to the present site of Banff, Alberta where the Spray River joins with the Bow River and then south up the Spray River valley where the reservoir now lies. They trekked up the Spray River, then along a tributary, White Man's Creek, and across the Great Divide at White Man's Pass. In his book "The Place of B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in the southwestern United States. Depending on differing definitions between Canada and the U.S., its northern terminus is located either in northern British Columbia's Terminal Range south of the Liard River and east of the Trench, or in the northeastern foothills of the Brooks Range/ British Mountains that face the Beaufort Sea coasts between the Canning River and the Firth River across the Alaska-Yukon border. Its southernmost point is near the Albuquerque area adjacent to the Rio Grande rift and north of the Sandia–Manzano Mountain Range. Being the easternmost portion of the North American Cordillera, the Rockies are distinct from the tectonically younger Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada, which both lie farther to its we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Continental Divide
A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not connected to the open sea. Every continent on earth except Antarctica (which has no known significant, definable free-flowing surface rivers) has at least one continental drainage divide; islands, even small ones like Killiniq Island on the Labrador Sea in Canada, may also host part of a continental divide or have their own island-spanning divide. The endpoints of a continental divide may be coastlines of gulfs, seas or oceans, the boundary of an endorheic basin, or another continental divide. One case, the Great Basin Divide, is a closed loop around an endoreic basin. The endpoints where a continental divide meets the coast are not always definite since the exact border between adjacent bodies of water is usually not clearly defined. The In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bow River
The Bow River is a river in Alberta, Canada. It begins within the Canadian Rocky Mountains and winds through the Alberta foothills onto the prairies, where it meets the Oldman River, the two then forming the South Saskatchewan River. These waters ultimately flow through the Nelson River into Hudson Bay. The Bow River runs through the city of Calgary, taking in the Elbow River at the historic site of Fort Calgary near downtown. The Bow River pathway, developed along the river's banks, is considered a part of Calgary's self-image. First Nations made varied use of the river for sustenance before settlers of European origin arrived, such as using its valleys in the buffalo hunt. The name ''Bow ''refers to the reeds that grew along its banks and were used by the First Nations to make bows; the Blackfoot language name for the river is , meaning "river where bow reeds grow". The river is an important source of water for irrigation and drinking water. Between the years 1910 and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spray River
The Spray River is a tributary of the Bow River in western Alberta, Canada. The Spray River originates in the southern area of Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies and soon enters the Spray Lakes Reservoir formed in 1951 after the construction of the ''Canyon Dam.'' At that point, the river briefly touches the Spray Valley Provincial Park before returning to Banff National Park. The river originally continued to flow north-northwest between the Goat Range and the Sundance Range before merging with Goat Creek at the northern end of the Goat Range and eventually meeting the Bow River in the Town of Banff, just below Bow Falls. However since the construction of the dam the Spray River bed is mostly dry north-northwest of the Spray Lakes Reservoir as the Dam diverts most of the water towards the Spray Powerhouse in Canmore. The river regains some water from Goat Creek and other smaller tributaries before arriving at the town of Banff. Meanwhile most of the Spray River' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Minnewanka
Lake Minnewanka () ("Water of the Spirits" in Nakoda) is a glacial lake located in the eastern area of Banff National Park in Canada, about northeast of the Banff townsite. The lake is long and deep, making it the 2nd longest lake in the mountain parks of the Canadian Rockies (the result of a power dam at the west end). The lake is fed by the Cascade River, flowing east of Cascade Mountain, and runs south through Stewart Canyon as it empties into the western end of the lake. Numerous streams flowing down from Mount Inglismaldie, Mount Girouard and Mount Peechee on the south side of the lake also feed the lake. Aboriginal people long inhabited areas around Lake Minnewanka, as early as 10,000 years ago, according to stone tools and a Clovis point spearhead discovered by archaeologists. The area is rich in animal life (e.g. elk, mule deer, bighorn sheep, bears) and the easy availability of rock in the mountainous terrain was key to fashioning weapons for hunting. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beaver (steamship)
''Beaver'' was a steamship originally owned and operated by the Hudson’s Bay Company. She was the first steamship to operate in the Pacific Northwest of North America, and made remote parts of the west coast of Canada accessible for maritime fur trading. At one point she was chartered by the Royal Navy for surveying the coastline of British Columbia. She served off the coast from 1836 until 1888, when she was wrecked. Service ''Beaver'' served trading posts maintained by the Hudson's Bay Company between the Columbia River and Russian America (Alaska) and played an important role in helping maintain British control in British Columbia during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858–59. In 1862 the Royal Navy chartered her to survey and chart the coast of the Colony of British Columbia. She also provided assistance to the Royal Navy at Bute Inlet during the Chilcotin War. Loss A consortium that became the British Columbia Towing and Transportation Company in 1874 purchased ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maskepetoon
Maskepetoon (c. 1807 – 1869) was a renowned Cree leader and warrior. He was a highly respected peace-maker, due to his negotiation of truces between the Cree and other First Nations. Grant MacEwan described him as the "Gandhi of the Plains." Early life It has been said by Hugh Dempsey that even during Maskepetoon's youth, he was an intelligent child and showed leadership. After leaving the care of his mother, Maskepetoon began to study the necessary skills of hunting and trapping. In the early to mid 1820s, his tribe struggled with starvation as well as ongoing conflict. This meant that Maskepetoon would have had to take up the role of a soldier, being put in positions of guarding the camp and scouting for any potential threats. Dempsey has also noted that Maskepetoon eventually chose peace over war following a visit to a holy man. He was said to have been spoken to by his father on the issue, his father telling him that he did not have to choose war. Despite being spoken to sev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
