Loder Peak
Despite the fact that explorer, David Thompson, died penniless and living in obscurity, he is today described as the greatest land geographer in history. Once called, Koo-Koo-Sint or the Stargazer, over his career he mapped almost 4 million square kilometers of North America.
This year marks the bicentennial of David Thompson's travels and delineation of the territory around Jasper National Park. To honour the occasion, several artists have created a legacy of paintings that detail his explorations in Western Canada. Artists, Joseph Cross, Don McMaster and the Valley Piecemaker’s Quilt Guild are featured in this Jasper-Yellowhead Museum & Archives exhibit as Jasper National Park celebrates the David Thompson bicentennial. Among other artifacts, the exhibit will also feature reproductions of Thompson’s sketches and the “Great Map” of the North West Territory of the Province of Canada.
In January 1811, David Thompson reached the Athabasca Pass and started down the steep slopes while waist deep in snow, en route to the Columbia River. During the fall of 1810 Thompson ran into opposition from the Piegan First Nations as he attempted to cross the Rockies via his usual route from Rocky Mountain House through Howse Pass. The Piegan were angry that Thompson had been trading guns with their enemies and he was forced to turn back. With winter coming quickly, Thompson opted to explore a different route and he and his men traveled north to the Athabasca River.
By December they made camp on the shores of Brule Lake and began to prepare themselves for winter travel. Thompson found an Iroquois guide to help them find their way in the unfamiliar country. Fitted out with snowshoes and dogsleds, they traveled along the Athabasca River, passing present day Jasper, until they came to a small prairie where they left their horses and started up the Whirlpool River.
Thompson’s men became uneasy in the mountain terrain where sudden avalanches crashed down from glaciers above the trail, and, where legend had it, a mammoth- like creature was thought to live in the mountain pass. As the party reached the pass, they struggled to make a steep decent to the confluence of the Pacific and Jeffrey creeks. Here the men became even more miserable as they slogged through the deep, wet snow that collected in the bottom of the canyons and valleys there.
Ultimately, when they reached the Columbia, some of Thompson’s men were sent back over Athabasca Pass to return to the eastern side of the mountains and retrieve more food and supplies. The rest of the party waited out the winter, hunting for moose and building a cedar canoe.
Thompson started up the Columbia River in April and arrived at the mouth on July 15th. There he discovered the Americans had beat him to the Pacific Ocean by four months and had already built a trading post called Fort Astoria. Ultimately, despite the setback, Thompson returned to Boat Encampment in the fall, having completed the survey of the Columbia River.
In 1812 Thompson left the Rocky Mountains for the last time and traveled east to Montreal with his wife Charlotte and their children. They settled in Terrebonne, where eight more children were born. Thompson spent the next several years working on his maps and completed the Map of the North-West Territory of the Province of Canada in 1813. This huge map, made up of 25 sheets of linen paper glued together, was the most accurate map available for almost 50 years.
Almost 40 years after leaving the Rocky Mountains, David Thompson started to write out his narrative using the 77 notebooks from his travels. It was never completed. Blind and almost penniless, he died in February 1857, three months before his wife, Charlotte. They are buried in Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.
Jasper-Yellowhead Museum & Archives, 400 Bonhomme St. - Historical Gallery includes exhibits on the fur trade, pioneers, the railways and early tourism in Jasper National Park. Among the artifacts on display are Curly Phillips’ canoe and the ice ax recovered from Mount Alberta.