THE MYSTERIOUS FATE OF HENRY HUDSON
A search for an explorer’s final resting place.
TRUE NORTH
Henry Hudson was one of the most steadfast, determined, and resolute of all the early explorers, singularly obsessed with finding the Northwest Passage. The thinking of the day was that, because the sun shines for three months out of the year, there might be an ice-free route north of Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, allowing Europeans easier access to the fantastic wealth of Asia. Alas, this was not so, and Hudson and his crew aboard the Discovery spent the winter of 1610–11 iced into the bay that now bears his name.
After a harsh winter, Hudson’s crew wanted to return home. He, however, wanted to press on westwards. They mutinied and put Hudson, his son John, and seven crewmen who were either loyal to him or ill aboard a small open boat. Hudson and his men tried to row after the Discovery, but soon fell behind and were never heard from again, lost to history.
NO BONES ABOUT IT
What happened to Henry Hudson and his men? Their fate is one of the unanswered questions of Canadian exploration. They had been set adrift in June, so there would have been plenty of time for them to build shelters and lay in provisions for the winter. They might have also traded with Native Americans for food and were perhaps taken in by a local tribe. However, the fact that Hudson had previously attacked and robbed the peoples he had found makes it unlikely.
A stronger possibility was that their interactions with natives was less friendly. In 1959, a stone with the words “HH captive 1612” was found along the banks of the Ottawa River near the town of Chalk River. Had Hudson and his men been taken prisoner and perhaps enslaved by Native Americans? Or was the stone a forgery? Adding to the difficulty was the fact that the stone was smashed by vandals in 2005. There are other tantalizing hints as to Hudsons’ ultimate fate. For instance, the Cree also have a legend that a white man had lived amongst them for a time.
Canadian referee Ron Foxcroft invented the Fox 40 whistle used at sporting events.
Though the search for Henry Hudson’s final resting place will never have a satisfactory ending, the search for the Northwest Passage concluded with an interesting twist. The explorers of the seventeenth century couldn’t find an all-water route to Asia because none existed at the time. Sea ice made the journey impossible. The first to travel it entirely by sea was the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, and it took him from 1903 to 1906. However, that all changed in the twenty-first century. By 2007, thanks to global warming, the sea ice had retreated to allow routine commercial shipping to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
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TURN DOWN THOSE FALLS
Is the roar of Niagara Falls a little too loud for you? You could ask them to turn it down a bit. Power-generating plants in Canada and the United States really do control the flow at Niagara with hydro gates that are set up before the falls. When they reduce the flow going over the falls, they are able to force more water into the hydro generation plants to create additional power. But June to August is peak tourist time, and the power authorities want to keep the tourist business booming, so they let the water flow at 28,317,000 liters (7,480,500 gallons) per second during the day. That amount of water would fill up 50 Olympic-size swimming pools in one minute. In the evening and the off season (November to April) though, they cut back the amount of water flowing over the falls by half. Those who have been there during the day and then at night will tell you that the volume difference is clearly noticeable. They say it almost seems quiet.
Canada Post’s official address to send mail to Santa Claus: NORTH POLE H0H 0H0 CANADA.