Return to the Peel Journal - Day 16 RCGS Arctic Expedition 2018
- David McGuffin
- Apr 30, 2019
- 2 min read
David and Graham McGuffin and Terry Camsell at journey's end, Ft McPherson, NWT.
July 31. From Ft McPherson to Whitehorse.
It took us 12 days of paddling down the Wind and the Peel to reach Fort McPherson. It took us 12 hours to drive all the way back down the Dempster Highway to Whitehorse, where we have planes to catch and lives to resume.
Uber mensch, Sean Gray (back left) drove us and all our gear back to Whitehorse.
Sean Gray, a friend of Terry’s from Inuvik, drove us to Whitehorse. He had some time off so said he was happy to do it. He then turned around and drove back to the Inuvik the next day. Northern hospitality and endurance are both impressive things. The Dempster Highway is incredibly beautiful. I’d love to come back and see it at a slower speed one day.
My great-grandfather, Charles Camsell, one of Canada's great explorers.
This journey was inspired by my great-grandfather, Charles Camsell who was a great explorer. He mapped out hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of the Canadian north, much of that done from a canoe after the turn of the last century.
Camsell, second from right, on a 1914 mapping expedition of the Tazin and Talston Rivers, in Saskatchewan and the NWT.
Born to an English father and Metis mother at Fort Liard, a tiny fur trading post in the Northwest Territories, he was a trapper, teacher, arctic mail carrier, who went on to take part in the Klondike gold rush, study geology at the University of Manitoba, Queen's, M.I.T. and Harvard. He had a hand in discovering the Uranium depostis on Great Slave Lake that were used in the Manhattan project. He became Canada’s Deputy Minister of Mines and Commissioner of the North, as well as founder of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He was a great Canadian, who’s bravery, curiosity and tenacity helped shape this country into what it is today. It was an honour to have traced even a little bit of his incredible journey with my son, Graham and cousin Terry.
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