Mackenzie, Alexander

MACKENZIE, Alexander, fur trader, explorer (b 1764, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland; d 12 Mar 1820, Dunkeld, Scotland). At age 10 he went to the US with his widowed father, who subsequently died fighting on the loyalist side in the Revolutionary War. Young Alexander's aunts sent him to Montreal to go to school, and in 1779 he entered the FUR TRADE firm of Gregory, McLeod, one of the companies that later amalgamated to form the NORTH WEST CO. At that time Mackenzie became a partner and went to winter at a post on the Athabasca R, where he developed a plan to seek out the great river rumoured to flow westward into the Pacific. In 1789 he travelled north down the river that now bears his name, as far as the Arctic Ocean. He was the first European to explore the Mackenzie R to its mouth but he was disappointed that it had not taken him in the direction he expected. He set out again in 1793, this time following a route up the PEACE R, across the ROCKY MTS, down the FRASER R and overland with the help of FIRST NATIONS guides to reach the Pacific at the mouth of BELLA COOLA R on North Bentinck Arm. He and his party continued by CANOE and reached DEAN CHANNEL, where he painted on a rock in Elcho Harbour the famous message "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, 22nd July 1793," before returning the way he had come. Parks Canada has erected a plaque at the site to commemorate the first known crossing of N America by a non-aboriginal person. Mackenzie was unaware that just 6 weeks earlier George VANCOUVER had rowed through these same waters as part of his survey of the coast. The next year Mackenzie went to Montreal, where he became a lightning rod for discontent within the NWC. In 1799 he quit the Nor'westers and joined the rival XY Co, which embarked on a bitter competition for control of the trade. The rivalry proved ruinous, and in 1804 the 2 companies combined. Mackenzie returned to England, where the publication of the journals of his expeditions, Voyages from Montreal (1801), had made him a celebrity and won him a knighthood. In 1812 he married and retired to a Scottish estate.