First Crossing: Alexander Mackenzie, His Expedition Across North America, and the Opening of the Continent

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

This volume is the equivalent of an intricately designed and carefully
constructed nest of wooden eggs, each a discovery to delight the eye and
stimulate the imagination. While the focus is resolutely on Mackenzie
and his two great expeditions to the Arctic and the Pacific, Derek Hayes
examines dozens of other subjects as they become pertinent to the story.
He presents the early history of the fur trade in New France and British
North America, with particular emphasis on the trader-explorers, their
particular perceptions of the geography of northern America and its
commercial possibilities. Then readers are introduced to the partnership
that offered Mackenzie his first berth, the North West Company, a
veritable partnership of partnerships. Subsequently we meet that
enigmatic American trader, Peter Pond, whose advocacy of certain
geographical theories helped motivate Mackenzie.

The central portion of the work focuses first on the Arctic, then on
the Pacific expedition. The final quarter of the volume reviews
Mackenzie’s subsequent bouts of depression and the differences with
McTavish that led to Mackenzie’s buying a controlling interest in the
rival XY Company. He subsequently left British North America, prepared
his journals for publication, and found in William Coombe an editor and
ghostwriter. The book enjoyed remarkable success, and Mackenzie received
his knighthood. Further details follow, including his advocacy of a
large imperial view with a plan for bringing the interests of the
Hudson’s Bay Company, the East Indian Company, and the North West
Company together; the meeting with John Franklin, who was about to map
the Arctic coastline; and Mackenzie’s declining health and death on
March 12, 1820, well before his 60th birthday. The volume concludes with
an examination of his great contemporaries, Lewis and Clark, Simon
Fraser, and David Thompson.

First Crossing is printed on heavy, glossy stock and is richly
illustrated with excerpts from Mackenzie’s writings, historic and
contemporary paintings, engravings, photographs, and maps. There are
dozens of sidebars containing succinct but illuminating information
about such matters as long credit in the fur trade, pemmican, and the
lives of Mackenzie’s associates. The work is strongly recommended to
the general reader as a source of inspiration; to the traveler who would
like to retrace portions of Mackenzie’s voyages; and to elementary-
and secondary-school teachers and their students, as well as university
undergraduates, as an initial source book.