Canada Scots Who Found the Modern World

For over two centuries, a remarkable collection of Scots

blazed a trail into unknown corners of the world.

Their epic journeys in the harshest of conditions helped forge nations

and draw the maps of three continents.

From the frozen wastes of Canada to the unseen heart of Africa

and across the rolling oceans to the parched deserts of Australia,

Scottish explorers have been at the forefront

of expanding the frontiers of the world in which we live.

This is the story of the Scottish discovery of our world.

Canada.

Thousands of miles of pristine forest,

forbidding mountains and frozen wastes,

stretching from ocean to ocean across the top of the world.

This is a country whose history is intimately connected with Scotland -

Canada was settled by Scots and explored by Scots.

As a nation, it was shaped by Scots.

The Scots sent leaders.

Well-educated young people, energetic,

and suddenly they arrived in this vast land

and there was all kinds of opportunity there.

By the end of the 18th century, only a few thousand Europeans lived here.

Many of the first to arrive had sailed due west from Orkney.

They crossed the Atlantic in great numbers,

becoming trappers and merchants for gigantic fur-trading enterprises

like the Hudson's Bay Company.

They tried bringing Englishmen, but they didn't take so well.

They hadn't been toughened up the way the Orcadians had,

and if you look at the landscape of Orkney, you can see

how it would have prepared them for the hardships

they might find working for the Hudson's Bay Company.

Life at these bay side posts was tough,

even for the Orcadians, who were used to tough conditions.

One man actually wrote home about how, during the night,

he had rolled over in his bunk

to lean his head against the wall while he slept.

He awoke to his horror in the morning

to discover his hair had frozen to the wall.

From these cold and isolated settlements,

Scottish traders began to explore the interior of this vast land.

Theirs were the first Scottish footprints in Canada.

The first tentative steps in the Scottish discovery

of a new world that they intended to make their own.

Soon they were being joined by their fellow countrymen.

Thomas Douglas Selkirk, 5th Earl of Selkirk,

was an idealistic young Aristocrat

from St Mary's Isle, Kirkcudbrightshire.

In 1792, he had toured the Highlands,

which were in turmoil.

Tenant farmers were being driven off the land

to make way for more profitable sheep.

Selkirk was shocked by the extreme poverty he witnessed

and decided to dedicate his life

and substantial fortune to helping the poor and dispossessed Scots.

He was a dreamer.

He wanted to do something philanthropic

and useful for the Highlanders, and he had lots of money and ambition.

What are you going to do?

About the only thing you can do under those circumstances

is try to use the money to make some kind of reputation,

and Selkirk decided to attempt to re-colonize Scots

and Irish who were leaving for the United States, to redirect them

to British North America, to what is now Canada.

'Now it is our duty to befriend these people.

'Let us direct their immigration

'and let them be led abroad to new possession.

'Give them homes under our flag and they will strengthen the nation.'

Selkirk's highlanders began making their way across the ocean.

Well, there were a variety of reasons that Scots immigrated.

In some cases, they were really given no choice.

In some cases, they were actually actively encouraged -

that is, assisted - in their emigration by landlords,

by private land companies here or by the British Government itself.

Selkirk believed that Canada could be the saviour of his countrymen.

He planned a series of ambitious settlements

in which entire Highland communities would relocate to the new world.

He was convinced he was delivering his people to a promised land.

This was a great attraction for people from Scotland

in the 18th and 19th century.

The opportunity to become an independent landowner,

no longer beholden to anybody else

for decisions to be made about their economic and other futures.

In 1811, Selkirk purchased land along the Red River,

in the modern-day province of Manitoba.

The area was several times the size of Scotland

and offered bountiful land for farming and settlement.

But the Scottish settlers would not be the only people living there.

Canada's always portrayed, or the Americas are always portrayed,

as this place just waiting for somebody to discover it

without any... It's like history started after the Europeans arrive,

but this was a country that... There were lots of people here.

You know, the territories belonged to different people.

It was their homeland.

The Metis - First Nations people of mixed blood -

already inhabited this area.

Many of the Metis people on the Red River were half Scots -

the legacy of relations with Orcadian fur traders.

I'm a Scottish half-breed.

Lots of inter-marriages, so in the end, we now are Metis.

We identify as Metis people.

Initially, the Metis got on well with the Highlanders.

There were some really good relationships formed.

They were dressed poorly and they were poor people,

and the Aboriginal people felt really sorry for them.

But soon, the Scots ran into problems.

As winter closed in, Selkirk's promised land

began to look less and less promising.

It was a terrible business getting there,

and then once you got there, you didn't find very much.

There was very little shelter and very little food.

The problems were almost overwhelming for these people.

A Hudson's Bay Company officer wrote of the settlers' misery.

'The settlers are in a very melancholy

'and very distressed condition.

'What will become of these miserable people

'and ourselves? God in heaven alone can know.

'I look forward with horror to the long, dreadful winter.'

And not all of the Scots' neighbours were pleased to see them.

A dubious venture from the beginning made even more dubious

by the fact that the North West Company

already had a fur-trading post in the valley.

Selkirk's new settlement was right in the middle

of an important fur-trading route.

The management of the North West Company,

whose traders saw the settlement as a threat to their lucrative work,

were not amused.

Low supplies made the prospect of winter even worse.

To stave off hunger, the export of nutritious buffalo meat was banned.

But Pemerken, as it was known, sustained both the fur-traders

and the Metis on their expeditions.

If they couldn't take it with them,

their way of life would be destroyed.

This seemingly-innocuous decision

pitted the highlanders against the fur traders and the Metis.

It was the beginning of the battle of Scot against half-Scot

on the edge of the known world.

But it was also the battle of two visions of Canada -

Selkirk's vision of ordered settlement and migration

and the Metis people's desperate fight to remain masters

of their own land.

One Metis was ready to lead the fight.

Cuthbert Grant was half-Scottish and half-Native American.

Educated in Scotland, but with the prairie in his blood,

he would become one of the most important leaders in Metis history.

Mixed-blood people, we like heroes, we like bravery.

He was very passionate, and he was very charismatic.

He was able to lead people and...

Very much, I guess, like the old Highland chiefs.

He could convince people that, "OK, let's all go to war."

He made people believe in who they were and what they had.

# The light is finally fading

# And so I say goodnight... #

Grant began a guerrilla campaign to reclaim the Pemerken

for the Metis, seizing supplies from the Red River settlement.

On June 19th 1816, he was stopped at Seven Oaks

by a group of Red River settlers.

In the ensuing battle, 22 settlers were killed, along with one Metis.

Grant led his men to Fort Douglas,

at the heart of the Red River settlement,

and burned it to the ground.

The highlanders, who had hoped for a better life,

were again evicted from their homes.

This crushing victory was to have a profound significance

on the Metis nation -

their resistance to outsiders

became a focal point for their shared identity.

History and historians have treated Seven Oaks

as if it were a massacre, and our people attacked these white people

and just wiped them out, when, in fact, not knowing the history,

that people were fighting for their land and their survival.

People called themselves Metis long before,

but we say that our history started in Red River.

Cuthbert Grant went on to lead his own Metis settlement

of over 2,000 people just west of the Red River.

It was named Grant Town in his honour.

But in the years since, the Metis experience in Canada

has been a difficult one.

# The dream has come

# And gone... #

Here in Point Douglas, in downtown Winnipeg,

is where Fort Douglas once stood.

It was at the heart of the Red River settlement.

# The dream is back in space... #

Today, around 40% of residents identify as Metis or Aboriginal.

The area is home to some of the poorest families in the city.

# The dream has come

# And gone. #

For Selkirk, the defeat of the settlers was a disaster.

He had devoted most of his life and wealth to the settling of Canada.

With mounting debts, he left Canada a broken man,

and died just two years after the battle of Seven Oaks.

Yet it is Selkirk's vision that has triumphed in Canada.

After 1815, it turns out that Selkirk was on the winning side,

rather than being a lone voice.

Everybody joined him in supporting assisted settlement

and immigration to British North America.

They were coming to a place that was already inhabited,

and they, in that respect, became agents of modernisation.

Kildonan Cemetery, near the Red River in Winnipeg,

is the final resting place for many of Selkirk's settlers.

# Let us pause in life's pleasures

# And count his many tears

# While we all sup sorrow with the poor

# There's a song that will linger

# Forever in our ears

# Oh, hard times, come again no more... #

John McKay, one of the first settlers at Red River,

predicted their eventual triumph.

'You may tread with pride and wonder, o'er this ever-sacred sod,

'but a little band of crofters

'claimed the great, new West for God.'

# Oh, hard times, come again no more. #

Far beyond the Red River lay a vast, frozen wilderness.

The High Arctic is where Scots explorers would unlock

some of the greatest mysteries of science and geography.

Churchill, a town on the shore of Hudson Bay in Manitoba,

was an important trading post for the Hudson's Bay Company,

and the site of its first permanent settlement.

Many explorers made their way through here

en route to the High Arctic.

It's probably the toughest sailing you can possibly imagine.

The passageways are narrow, they're ice-choked for much of the year.

They have strong currents. To this day, they have uncharted reefs.

For Europeans, the Arctic was a blank space on the map,

but hidden here was the Holy Grail of 19th-century exploration -

the mysterious and fabled Northwest Passage.

Explorers of the time speculated on the existence of a sea route

from the Atlantic to the Arctic Ocean and on to the Pacific.

If such a route existed, it would revolutionise world trade.

The search for the Northwest Passage had been going on for centuries.

The whole idea was to get from Europe

over to the riches of the Far East, of China and so forth.

So North America at that point was conceived as something,

"Well, this is just in the way.

"There must be a way through from here to there

"that's going to be much shorter."

That would be a tremendous trade route that would save them

a lot of time and money and that would make everybody rich.

John Ross, from Stranraer, joined the Royal Navy

at just nine years old.

He spent most of the next 30 years at sea,

serving in the Napoleonic wars and reaching the rank of commander.

In 1818, Ross was asked to command an expedition

to find the Northwest Passage.

He would need all those years of experience

as he sailed into the ice-bound Arctic.

After several fruitless forays,

which ended in ice-bound frustration,

John Ross spotted something in the distance.

'I distinctly saw the land round the bottom of the bay

'forming a connected chain of mountains.'

He named them Croker Mountains,

after the secretary of the admiralty.

The mountains meant this stretch of water could not be the passage.

Ross turned for home, but many of his crew argued the decision.

Not everyone had seen Croker Mountains. For good reason...

..they didn't exist.

The Arctic can not only play tricks on the mind,

but can also play tricks on the eye.

John Ross' Croker Mountains were a mirage.

It's a mirage called Phantom Morgana,

where it looks as though there are mountains

in the distance on sunny days.

The imaginary mountains cost John Ross his reputation,

and his distinguished career was ruined.

The illusion of Croker Mountains

haunted him for the rest of his life.

But the family reputation would be restored

by John Ross' nephew, James,

who was to become the most experienced Royal Navy officer

in Arctic exploration.

He was also admired as its most handsome officer.

In 1831, Commander James Clark Ross set out on a mission

to find the location of the North Magnetic Pole.

If he could find it, he could revolutionise maritime navigation.

A magnetic compass was one of the main instruments used in navigation.

But a compass does not point exactly north.

It points instead to the North Magnetic Pole.

The difference between magnetic north

and true north meant that sailors were not able to use a compass

to navigate precisely in unknown lands.

The actual magnetic field of the Earth is a small force.

Something we can't necessarily feel it ourselves,

but it's enough to tamper with instruments,

affect electrical transmissions.

But if the magnetic north could be found,

mariners would be able to calculate the difference between the two poles

and allow ships sailing in any part of the world

to better fix their position.

From a Churchill standpoint,

we have a lot of ships navigating in and out of the bay,

which is important to the economy here,

and obviously understanding the Magnetic North Pole

is a big part of navigation.

Whilst sailing through treacherous channels, Ross' ship, the Victory,

became trapped in ice.

Spring turned to summer, and then quickly to winter.

Valiant attempts were made to break free,

resulting in nothing more than soul-destroying voyages

of three or four miles before being frozen in again.

'Today was as yesterday, and as was today, so would be tomorrow.

'To us, the sight of the ice was a plague, a vexation,

'a torment, an evil, a matter of despair.'

We also get in the Arctic multi-winter ice.

Multi-winter sea ice is ice that doesn't thaw in the summer.

It keeps growing in thickness.

It can be as much as seven metres thick.

And it has a hardness about the same as reinforced concrete.

He knew what he was doing to have survived that many winters there.

Life on board a ship that's locked in the ice

is an exercise in terror and boredom combined together.

You know the ice around you can close essentially at any minute

and crush your ship.

There's no-one for hundreds or even thousands of kilometres

in any direction, and you know no rescue is possible.

In his second year trapped in the ice,

Ross led his men to try and locate

the position of the North Magnetic Pole.

Using a dip circle - an instrument that calculates magnetic fields -

Ross searched for a point in the frozen landscape

where the needle of the dip circle would point vertically downwards.

Ross and his men made a series of sledge journeys

hundreds of miles north in severe cold and rough ice.

Men suffered frostbite, fatigue and snow-blindness.

But, at eight in the morning on 1st June 1831,

the needle sank towards the snow.

'I believe I must leave it to others to imagine the elation of mind

'with which we found ourselves now at length arrived

'at this great object of our ambition.

'It almost seemed as if we had accomplished everything

'that we had come so far to see and do.

'As if our voyage and all its labours were at an end

'and that nothing now remained for us

'but to return home and be happy for the rest of our days.'

The measurements showed that

the Magnetic North Pole was beneath Ross' feet.

Ross stood on the verge of revolutionising navigation.

The crucial discrepancy between the magnetic north

and true north could now be factored into charts all over the world.

James Clark Ross and the crew of the Victory

had also survived four winters in the Arctic -

an unheard-of feat for Europeans.

He returned to Britain a hero.

But a greater mystery remained -

the whereabouts of the Northwest Passage,

the route that would turn the Canadian Arctic

into a highway of trade and riches.

The Hudson's Bay Company had devised their own plan

to find the Northwest Passage,

and they chose a doctor from Orkney to lead the way.

John Rae was born in Orphir in 1813.

By his mid-30s,

he'd become one of the most respected explorers in the Arctic.

George Simpson - the venerable Scot

in charge of the Hudson's Bay Company -

believed that only Rae possessed the unique combination of skills

the mission required.

'We look confidently to you for the solution of what may be deemed

'the final problem in the geography of the northern hemisphere.

'For almost the world expects the final settlement of the question

'that has occupied the attention of our country for 200 years.'

As a young boy, Rae learned to sail small boats and to shoot.

He explored the hills and moors

and climbed the rocks on the sea cliffs of Orkney.

He qualified as a surgeon at the University of Edinburgh aged 19,

and in 1833 took up a summer job as a doctor

on one of the Hudson's Bay Company ships.

For ten years, his work as a surgeon took him across the vast lands

controlled by the company. He learned local methods

of travelling and hunting from aboriginal people.

He became an expert snowshoer,

and once walked 1,000 miles to treat an injured Inuit man.

This feat earned him the Inuit nickname Aglooka -

he who takes long strides.

This was a man who adapted to the conditions here,

and knowing what it's like to live in this area, it is just amazing.

It's not impossible to survive here - that's one of the things.

While this landscape looks hard and bleak

and almost inhospitable to life,

if you know where to look, life abounds in the Arctic.

You just have to know how to live off this land.

One of the things Rae had

was an incredible relationship with the Inuit people.

He had an incredible relationship with all aboriginal peoples,

and there's a wonderful portrait of Rae

in which he is dressed in a variety of aboriginal dress,

and I know purists has kind of said, "Well, that's kind of strange.

"He's got Inuit footwear on and he's got Cree leggings,

"and it's all confused," and that was Rae's precise point.

He was a friend of the aboriginal people generally.

'I have had some opportunities of studying Eskimo character,

'and from what I have seen, I consider them

'superior to all the tribes of the Red Men in America.

'In their domestic relationship,

'they show a bright example to the most civilised people.

'They are dutiful sons and daughters, kind brothers and sisters

'and most affectionate parents.'

The Inuit tradition of using dog teams was also adopted by Rae.

For some, that tradition is as important today as it was then.

Well, in the 1800s, that's all they had back then was the dog team,

and for them to travel

out in the land the way they do up here,

dogs were the best suited for that terrain.

And, without their dogs, a lot of them would perish,

because they couldn't make it to the next stop

with all their freight and stuff.

So, the dogs were depended on very heavily to carry supplies

and carry the mail and all those types of things.

Hup-hup-hup! Good dogs!

Good doggies. Let's go. Hup-hup!

It's a freedom that I can't find anywhere else.

When you're on the back of a dog team and they're running down a trail

and they're all just doing their jobs,

it's just beautiful to watch them do what they love to do.

They love to run,

and I'm just the lucky fella who gets to see them work.

If you take the time to listen to the local people where you go,

they've learned to survive in the climates that they lived in,

and it's no different here in the north.

When we go from here up north

to where the Inuit people live,

we take their advice and we listen to what they tell us.

Because out there is their land, and they know how to survive out there.

John Rae's talents would soon be tested to the limits,

and he would soon be looking for

more than just a way through the ice.

The Royal Navy was determined to be the first to find the passage.

In 1845, it had put together

an expedition on two steam-powered ships - the Erebus and the Terror.

The hull of each ship was reinforced with steel

to withstand the crushing pressure of the ice.

The expedition consisted of 128 men,

and was lavishly supplied with food and drink

from Fortnum and Mason, among others.

There were 1,200 books

for the men to while away the hours with on board.

Their leader was Sir John Franklin - a respected Arctic veteran.

It was the most extravagant and expensive expedition Britain had ever seen.

A nation expected.

Explorers had by then established -

"OK, you can come in here from the Atlantic

"and you can come in or go out here from the Pacific",

so when Franklin sailed in 1845,

they thought he was going to simply link those two channels

and emerge into the Pacific trailing clouds of glory.

But instead of glory, there was silence.

Nothing was heard for months.

Then years.

These guys sailed in and they bring their world with them on the ship,

but it's not like today - you've got a GPS, you've got a satellite radio,

and you can phone home and say, "This is what's happening today",

or you can text a message - no, no!

When you sailed into the North, you were gone and you were completely out of contact,

so try to imagine what that world was like then.

I mean you're shut into a world all by yourself and there's hardship.

You know, you trek out into that white howling wildness,

you'd better believe in the man who's leading you,

that he knows what he's doing.

Franklin had vanished.

As well as finding the Northwest Passage,

John Rae was now asked to find the Franklin expedition.

But Rae wouldn't need hundreds of men, nor Fortnum and Mason,

to survive in this brutal landscape.

He and a small party of men would winter north of the tree line

and survive by living off the land.

It would be a test of strength and spirit, of mind and body.

The landscape does have a tendency to make one feel very small,

especially if you're in it by yourself.

You really do get a sense that you're almost alone in the world.

The silence, especially on a still night, is almost deafening

and the Northern Lights, I wonder if it was very comforting for them,

because they're an absolutely unearthly beautiful phenomenon

but they can definitely be unnerving to those that aren't familiar with them.

But John Rae was looking forward to the challenge.

'The novelty of our route and our intended mode of operations

'had a strong charm for me

'and gave me an excitement which I could not otherwise have felt.'

John Rae and his men pushed further and further into uncharted territory.

While exploring King William Island,

nine years after the Franklin expedition had left London,

Rae made contact with local Inuit,

who were carrying relics from Franklin's ships.

They gave shocking eyewitness accounts

of the fate of the lost expedition.

By chance, he encountered an Inuit, an Inuk,

who was wearing a cap band,

that he looked at and that looks kind of strange

and he talked to him and said, "Well, where did you get that?"

and it came from the Franklin expedition.

And they also had the stories

because they had observed what happened at a distance.

So these sailors pulling boats and sleds loaded with goods

across the ice in a pitiful condition

and that they found the bodies, the graves,

and even the contents of the kettles

that suggested that the last pitiful survivors actually resorted to cannibalism of the dead.

John Rae pieced together what had happened to the expedition.

The ships had become trapped in ice.

Franklin had died in the second winter

and his crew had taken to land,

desperately hauling two-tonne lifeboats.

These remaining men ate the bodies of their dead comrades

in a desperate, futile bid to stay alive.

The horror of seeing their ships go down or having to evacuate them.

It must have been almost overwhelming,

and the ice finally closed in on them off King William Island.

They were done for - crushed and have never been found.

Today, Parks Canada still is looking for the Terror and the Erebus

and we still haven't found them.

As well as bringing home news about Franklin,

Rae had other earth-shattering news.

On May 6th 1854, through fierce winds and heavy blowing snow,

John Rae had forced his way north along the Boothia Peninsular.

He noticed that where his charts indicated he should see land,

he saw instead a frozen channel.

The channel consisted of young ice, which could melt in the summer,

and if it could melt, then this was not land

but it was actually a sea passage -

the Northwest Passage.

John Rae in my view is the most underrated but most successful

and most admirable of all the Arctic explorers.

He was the greatest explorer of the 19th century.

He was the one who solved the two great mysteries of Arctic exploration of the time.

Number one - he discovered the final link in the Northwest Passage,

and number two - he discovered the fate of the Franklin expedition.

In just eight years, John Rae had travelled thousands of miles

in the Arctic, on foot and in small boats.

He had charted hundreds of miles of unknown coastline

and he had solved the greatest mystery of 19th century exploration.

John Rae had been tested under extreme conditions

in one of the most unforgiving parts of the world,

yet he was about to face the most difficult ordeal of his life.

Rae knew his report to the admiralty on the fate of Franklin

contained shocking news.

News that would be difficult for the Royal Navy to accept.

When he arrived in London, his report had already been leaked to The Times.

Franklin's widow, Lady Jane Franklin,

was distraught at her husband's disappearance,

and she refused to accept that his men had resorted to cannibalism.

She enlisted the aid of Charles Dickens,

who was the, you know... He was leading author of the age,

writing great long screeds,

calling into question Rae's version of events and the Inuit people.

'The word of a savage is not to be taken for cannibalism.

'Firstly because he is a liar. Secondly because he is a boaster.

'Thirdly because he talks figuratively.

'Even the sight of cooked and dissevered human bodies

'among this or that tattooed tribe is not proof.'

Rae was vilified for believing the Inuit people,

but he stood firm.

'That 20 or 25 Eskimo could for two months together

'continue to repeat the same story without variation on any material point

'and adhere firmly to it, in spite of all sorts of cross-questioning,

'is to me the clearest proof that the information they gave me

'was founded on fact.'

But the British public could not believe

that God-fearing men of the Royal Navy would resort to such barbarism.

Every crew member of Franklin's ships received a posthumous knighthood.

A statue of Franklin, approved by the House of Commons,

stands in Waterloo Place in London.

It claims that he found the Northwest Passage.

I remember, I caught the train into London

and went to Waterloo Place and there was this statue of Franklin

and I remember the sense of outrage I felt,

you know, slapping my head,

because Franklin was being hailed on this statue as the discoverer of the Northwest Passage

and to me it's obviously still a wrong that should be righted.

I mean, it should be a statue of John Rae standing there.

Rae never wavered from his belief in the Inuit accounts of the Franklin expedition.

His reputation never recovered.

His immense achievement of discovering the last link

in the Northwest Passage was for decades airbrushed from history.

Rae was laid to rest in St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall in 1893.

Ten years after his death, Norwegian explorer Roald Adamson

was the first to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage

through the strait that now bears John Rae's name.

John Rae's discovery of the Northwest Passage

had solved one of the greatest mysteries in exploration.

But much of Canada's land was still uncharted.

Across the Pacific, the riches of the Orient awaited,

along with the possibility of exporting furs to a new and lucrative market.

Scottish explorers were given the task of charting these new routes.

They were looking for a route to the sea

because that would cut off this 4,000km trip that they had to make

with their furs and their trade goods each year.

Alexander Mackenzie from Stornoway was confident that he was the man for the job.

'Being endowed by nature with an inquisitive mind and enterprising spirit,

'possessing also a constitution and frame of body equal to the most arduous undertakings,

'I not only contemplated the practicability of penetrating across the continent of America

'but was confident in the qualifications

'as I was animated by the desire to undertake the perilous enterprise.'

Mackenzie was fearless.

A high spirited and innovative explorer,

he had travelled far and wide in the service of the North West Company for ten years.

The journey he embarked upon in 1792 would make him a hero of modern Canada.

There were thousands of miles standing between Mackenzie and his goal of the Pacific ocean.

Miles of dense uncharted forest, raging rivers,

and the formidable Rocky Mountains.

Mackenzie and his men battled raging rapids in their flimsy birch bark canoes.

'The toil of our navigation was incessant and oftentimes extreme,

'and in our progress over land, we had no protection from the severity

'of the elements and possessed no accommodations or conveniences,

'but such as could be contained on the burden on our shoulders.'

Mackenzie's route eventually led him to descend the deep gorge

of the turbulent river where he encountered indigenous villagers.

Following their directions,

Mackenzie's party continued down river.

"I could perceive the termination of the river

"and its discharge into the narrow arm of the sea."

The narrow arm of the sea was the Pacific Ocean.

Mackenzie had completed the first trans-continental crossing

of North America north of Mexico.

He had travelled thousands of miles to reach the Pacific.

But despite this triumph his employers were unimpressed.

His route was too difficult to be a useful highway for fur traders.

Simon Fraser thought he could do better.

Fraser's parents were highlanders who fled to Canada

from the United States after the War of Independence.

Their enterprising son prospered in their new home

rising from a humble clerk to full partner in the North West Company.

Fraser was an abrasive and ambitious man.

He possessed great physical courage

and had little time for his illustrious fellow Scot.

Fraser delighted in noting omissions in Mackenzie's journal.

"The fact that Trout Lake is a considerable large

"and navigable river in all seasons

"it does not appear to have been noticed by Sir AMK.

"Likely he did not see it

"and I can account for many other omissions in his journal."

Frazer certainly did not think a great deal of Mackenzie.

He makes a number of disparaging remarks about him

in his journal for example when he found the back river which

led him up to the place where he founded Fort Macleod,

the first permanent European settlement west of the Rockies

north of the California Spanish settlements,

he has a little note in his journal

that the great man must have been asleep when he went past.

But there were more important matters at hand

then a petty feud between explorers.

Alexander Mackenzie's journal had been read

by US President Thomas Jefferson

who was impressed by the commercial possibilities of the Pacific coast.

He wanted to claim it for the United States.

In this part of the world exploration was part of the battle

between competing empires.

The context of their engagement as explorers

was with British-based commerce and industry,

and I think that British-based military activity.

So while the Scots played a disproportionate role

which no-one will deny in these kind of enterprises,

they were still participants, conscious participants,

in a British enterprise.

The race for the west was on.

Fraser was in the middle of the continent working with the North West Company

when he was given a message that he was to cross the Rocky Mountains

and conclude the exploration

that had been begun by Alexander Mackenzie.

Fraser and his men found themselves riding

on one of the most turbulent rivers in North America.

Often the river became so perilous that he was forced

to hack foot holes into the cliffs rather than paddle through.

"We had to pass where no human being should venture for surely

"we have entered the gates of hell.

"Our situation is critical and highly unpleasant, however,

"we shall endeavour to make the best of it.

"What can not be cured must be endured."

When Fraser tasted salt in the air he knew he was close to the ocean

and to forging a viable trade route to the Pacific

but the atmosphere in this new country was hostile.

The indigenous people were plainly not pleased to see him.

"Here we are in a strange country surrounded with dangers

"and difficulties among numberless tribes of savages

"who never saw the face of a white man.

"The Indians advised us

"not to advance any further as the natives of the coast the islanders

"were at war with them

"and being very malicious they would destroy us."

There would have been First Nations villages up and down the river.

It was here that he first began to experience some conflict.

Now this region at that particular time seems to have been

in a state of warfare.

Fraser's canoes had been damaged.

He asked a local chief

if he could borrow a boat to complete his journey.

But with tensions in the region running high

this was a bad time to ask for a favour and he was refused.

"The chief made us understand that he was the greatest of his nation

"and equal in power to the sun.

"However, as we could not go without we persisted."

Fraser ignoring the refusal took a canoe anyway. It was a gamble.

He needed transport but he also needed First Nations People

to negotiate a way through the communities on the coast.

Without this help he was at the mercy of hostile tribes

like the Musqueam.

This is the mouth of Musqueam Creek.

This is one of the most historically significant places in British Columbia.

This is where Simon Fraser had his meeting with

and confrontation with the Musqueam warriors.

He had come down the river at high tide just like this.

He'd taken his canoe up this small creek

and there was a lagoon in the back.

There was fighting going on at the time

and the warriors seeing a strange canoe had came out making

a loud noise and banging their weapons.

Fraser and his crew grabbed their canoe

and hustled it down to the beach here and came back out.

They were able to stay out in the current here

and the Musqueam's were restricted to the shore.

They were fearful of being massacred by the hostile reception

they'd received here in Musqueam.

Fraser had no choice. The hostile Musqueam blocked his path.

Within sight of the ocean he had to turn back.

Musqueam marked the end of Fraser's incredible journey.

He was hugely frustrated.

He could see the Pacific but he could not reach the open ocean.

"I must acknowledge my great disappointment in not seeing

"the main ocean having gone so near it as to almost have been in view."

But Fraser was no failure.

His remarkable journey pushed the boundary of Canada

west to the coast.

By establishing forts along his route Fraser had planted

the seeds of Canadian settlement west of the Rockies.

He had foiled Jefferson's ambitions.

The region would not become part of the United States.

If it hadn't been for men like Simon Fraser

and Alexander Mackenzie this would be part of the United States today.

By extending the commercial reach of business enterprises

on the eastern side of the continent across the Rockies

and creating a permanent base for them and putting down

an infrastructure of communications and re-supply and settlement

without a doubt created the possibility of a national

union from one end of the continent to another.

So Canada would not be what it is today without

these Scottish explorers.

Fraser had named this area New Caledonia as the country

reminded him of his mother's descriptions of the Highlands.

It was later named British Columbia.

I think it's one of the most significant pieces of exploration.

He covered 1,600km in 2 months.

He encountered six or seven different nations,

some of them hostile.

He didn't inflict an injury on anybody,

he didn't lose a man,

and he got them all home safe.

By the late 19th century

Canada stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific,

from the frozen Arctic to the rolling prairies.

But the country's immense size meant that travel from one end

to the other remained a daunting task.

Solving this problem would fall to a man from Fife,

a man who was an explorer, inventor, engineer and artist

rolled into one.

Born in Kirkaldy in 1827,

Sandford Fleming was a surveyor on the Scottish railway system.

His job was to find the best route between the country's cities.

But the problems of building railways between Canadian towns

and cities far exceeded anything he'd attempted at home.

Mackenzie and Fraser had pushed out to the west by canoe

but the Rockies remained a major obstacle to east-west trade.

Fleming, however, had a great belief in the power of engineering

and he realised how the railway could transform Canada.

Mountains were once thought to be effectual barriers

against railways but that day has gone by.

This colony is dreaming magnificent dreams of a future when it

shall be the highway across which the fabrics and products of Asia

shall be carried to the eastern as well as to the western sides

of the Atlantic.

Fleming's task was to smooth the way between one end of Canada

and the other, conquering mountains, rivers and prairies along the way.

His railway would be one of the biggest

and most dangerous surveying jobs in the history of the world.

But it would also be a powerful physical symbol of Canadian unity.

# Hey, look yonder coming

# Coming down that railroad track... #

Canadian Pacific has a long history in this country.

Driving the last spike was a symbol of bringing the country together.

It was the defining moment when east and west rails met

and Canada became more of a country then.

"We have but to go forward, to open up for our children

"and the world that God has given into our possession,

"bind it together, consolidate it and lay the foundations

"of an enduring future."

Fleming and hundreds of men fought their way through swamps

and forest and across desolate rocky plains and raging rivers.

The survey teams faced freezing temperatures or soaring heat

as well as clouds of black flies and mosquitoes.

It's hard to imagine the difficulties the rail gangs

went through to build the line.

You look behind and it's rugged territory, mountains and streams,

and through the prairies it was relatively easy...

..going. It was when they reached the mountains -

the Selkirks and the Rockies - that it took extra time to build it.

"There are forces that can neither be organised nor bribed.

"Men have been destroyed by the elements, by fire and by water."

In spite of the difficulties,

Sandford Fleming's railway slowly snaked its way across Canada.

I think he was more than a railway man.

From the early 1860s

he had the dream of a trans-continental

railway across Canada.

He felt that this was the way of connecting the country

and promoting immigration.

"Looking back over the vast breadth of the dominion

"when our journeyings were ended, it rolled out before us

"like a panorama,

"varied and magnificent enough to stir the dullest spirit

"into patriotic emotion.

"We have travelled in all 5,300 miles between Halifax and Victoria

"over a country with features and resources more varied than even

"our modes of locomotion."

The last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railway was hammered in

here in Craigellachie, British Columbia on November 7th 1885.

The achievement is still celebrated annually.

This event celebrates an important moment in our nation's history.

On November 7th 1885 the last spike was driven into

the Canadian Pacific Railroad right here,

uniting Canada from coast to coast.

The development and construction of the Trans-continental Railway was

the most important nation-building enterprise in Canadian history.

This trans-continental link was a ribbon of steel

that bound our fledgling country together.

# There was a time in this fair land

# When the railroad did not run

# And the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun

# Long before the white man and long before the wheel

-# When the dark green forest was too silent to be real.

-#

This is one of the most famous images in Canada.

Sandford Fleming stands tall in this picture, very proud.

He has spent a great part of his life

dreaming of the Trans-continental Railway.

It's been written that, as the ceremony ended,

and the conductor for the train said, "All aboard for the Pacific",

he said it was like it had always been happening.

So he was very proud of this moment.

The hammering in of the last spike made Canada complete.

It also marked the culmination of Scottish exploration

of this vast land.

Few spots on the world's surface have been as profoundly

influenced by Scottish explorers and pioneers.

They built towns and settled entire communities.

They unlocked longstanding geographical mysteries

and bound a nation together by skill, bravery

and sheer force of will.

People with some Scottish blood line -

we're talking about people who may be third, fourth, fifth,

sixth, seventh generation Canadians - may have a small proportion

of Scottish blood coursing through their veins, to feel proud

about being Scots and to publicise the achievements of the Scots.

This has led in Canada to a particular emphasis on the Scots

as the archetypal Canadian pioneers,

the sturdy figures of Canadian society who helped to found

and shape the colonies, and later to forge the nation.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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