The first visitors to encounter Canada after the crossing of the nomadic hunters were the Vikings, whose ancestors had traveled from Norway to Iceland. From Iceland, the Vikings moved westward when Eric the Red discovered and settled Greenland. A fierce and hardy people, the Vikings were great sailors and often took to the seas in search of food and adventure. On one such voyage a seaman, Bjarne Herjolfsen, caught sight of North America and returned home to tell of the unknown land. Around AD 1000, Eric the Red’s son, Leif, set out to find the new continent.
The Viking sagas tell of Leif’s strange adventures and his discoveries of Helluland (Baffin Island), Markland (Labrador), and Vinland. In 1961 an archeologist, Helge Ingstad, stumbled upon the remains of a Norse settlement in L’Anse-aux-Meadows and decided that Vinland was probably Newfoundland. One year after the expedition, Leif’s brother Thorvald returned to North America hoping to make contact with Vinland’s natives. Legends tell of how “Skraelings” attacked Thorvald and his crew with bows and arrows. In other tales the illegitimate daughter of Eric the Red, Freydis the Brave and Cruel, defends the Vikings by rushing towards the Skraelings and frightening them with her wild eyes and gnashing teeth.
Who were the Skraelings? The Viking sagas describe them as dark-skinned people who wore their hair in a strange fashion. Historical anthropologists have speculated that they may have been Algonquins or early Inuit people. Whoever they were, they prevented the Vikings from establishing permanent settlements on the mainland. It is possible that the Vikings returned to northern Canada. The tall, blond “Copper Eskimos,” so named by the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefannson in 1910, have led some to suggest that these may be the offspring of early Norse people and the Inuit of Baffin Island.
The Vikings reached Canada from Iceland around AD 1000.
Mary Evans Picture Library
Cabot and Cartier
The dream of discovering a route across the Atlantic to the spices, jewels, and silks of the Orient became an obsession with kings and merchants. As improvements in shipbuilding occurred, the dream became a possibility. John Cabot is the first explorer to have “officially” discovered Canada and claimed it for a king. An Italian navigator, Cabot was known for his imaginative flights of fancy and adventuresome spirit. In 1496 he persuaded Henry VII to give him leave to find a route to the Indies and claim it for England. On May 2, 1497, Cabot boarded the Matthew with 18 men and set sail for the Americas. After 52 weary days at sea, the Matthew sighted land – historians are uncertain whether it was Newfoundland, Labrador, Cape Breton, or even Prince Edward Island – where Cabot landed on June 24. Cabot claimed the country to be under the sovereignty of Henry VII. But where was all the gold?
Martin Frobisher, the 16th-century explorer, set out in search of the Northwest Passage.
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Cabot soon discovered that the soil was extremely fertile and the climate warm and friendly. He was convinced that he had found the northeast coast of Asia; further investigation would surely lead him to the precious silks and gems of which he had so often dreamed. Cabot found neither, but he did report banks of teeming fish and a great abundance of timber.
Upon Cabot’s return, Henry VII, who had wanted gold, was singularly unimpressed with the explorer’s tales of fish and paid him £10 for his efforts. Still, in 1498 Cabot was given permission to make a second voyage. He set off from Bristol with five ships manned by 300 crew, never to be heard from again. Many explorers set out after Cabot but were not successful until Jacques Cartier, who was sent by Francis I of France, ventured to North America in 1534. His expedition marks the origin of French and British competition for its control.
On his first trip, Cartier traveled inland until he found the Gulf of St Lawrence. Assured that the river was a water route to the Orient, Cartier sailed up the St Lawrence until he came to the Iroquois villages of Hochelaga and Stadacona (the sites of modern Montréal and Québec City respectively). Francis I was disappointed that gold had not been found, but Cartier mollified the king by telling him a cross had been erected in his name on Gaspé Peninsula, and that the country had been named New France.
The early settlement of Québec.
Government of Quebec
The Arctic expeditions
While the early explorers devoted their time to discovering a new route to the Orient, 50 years after Cartier others became obsessed with the Northwest Passage. One such man was Martin Frobisher. With a reputation as a daredevil, in 1576 Frobisher was sent by Elizabeth I to find an ice-free route to the Americas. Despite Frobisher’s inability to produce anything of consequence for British history, he still remains something of a folk hero. More than 300 years after Frobisher’s voyages, the explorer Charles Francis Hall discovered the relics of a structure Frobisher’s crew had built. Hall wrote that in 1861, the native peoples spoke of Frobisher as if he had just visited them.
Henry Hudson was another man drawn to the excitement of exploration. Hoping to open a passage to China, Hudson made several trips to North America, his last one ending tragically. In 1609 the Discovery froze in the ice of James Bay. After a long, tense winter, Hudson quarreled with a member of his crew, John Greene, who later led his shipmates into mutiny. Hudson was set adrift in the bay with his son and seven others loyal to him, and was never heard of again.
In 1778 Captain James Cook explored the Pacific Coast in search of a river route through the continent.
Public domain
Following on Hudson’s heels in 1631 was Thomas James – after whom James Bay is named – who wrote vividly of his excursions in an account titled Strange and Dangerous Voyage. The writings of his log later became the material upon which Coleridge based his poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. After James, William Edward Parry, a British naval officer, pushed through the northern icebergs to reach Melville Island in 1819 – he had come the farthest yet.
Perhaps the most heart-wrenching story of all the explorers is that of John Franklin, a British rear admiral and explorer. In 1819 Franklin was put in charge of an exploration that was to mark out a route from Hudson Bay to the Arctic Ocean. He made a second trip in 1825 after the success of his first voyage and returned to North America a third time in 1845. On his last expedition, Franklin was sure he would find the Northwest Passage. His ships, Erebus and Terror, were last seen on July 26, 1845. Years later a rescue mission discovered their skeletal remains and a diary of the last days of the journey. Franklin, only a few miles from success, had died of exhaustion and exposure.
From 1903–6, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person successfully to traverse the fabled and ever-frozen Northwest Passage in a single ship. After 1909, discouraged by the news of Robert Peary’s successful foray to the North Pole, Amundsen turned his attention to Antarctica.
The West Coast of Canada was yet another site of interest for the ever-curious Europeans attempting to find an easy northern ocean passage to Europe.
Explorers traveled up the West Coast rivers of Canada in search of furs.
Young/Vancouver Public Library
Travelers to the west
In 1778 Captain James Cook landed on Canada’s West Coast in the course of his Pacific explorations. Cook volunteered to find a waterway through North America originating in the west but finally had to conclude that it did not exist. George Vancouver followed in 1791–5 and discovered the outlet of the Bella Coola river. Seven weeks later, Alexander Mackenzie, traveling overland, ended up at the same spot.
Such is the early history of Canada. For the Europeans, it yielded neither gold nor gems and was a disappointment. With resignation, the rulers of France and England began to make plans for the colonization of the New World.