YORK BOAT + MACKENZIE RIVER

The full index of our ship stamp archive
Post Reply
aukepalmhof
Posts: 7771
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 am

YORK BOAT + MACKENZIE RIVER

Post by aukepalmhof » Fri Apr 29, 2022 8:58 pm

Rising at the west end of Great Slave Lake, the Mackenzie River flows north-northwest, and eventually empties into the Beaufort Sea at the vast, multi-channeled Mackenzie Delta. Prior to European contact, the area was home to eight Indian tribes. After the confusing and erroneous findings of Captain Cook and Peter Pond (the first European to trade in the Mackenzie drainage basin), Alexander Mackenzie discovered Canada's longest river and became the first White Man to see the western Arctic Ocean. But his motives were more economic than exploratory. The North West Company desperately needed a navigable waterway to and from the Pacific Ocean to keep pace with its rival, the Hudson's Bay Company. On June 3, 1789 four canoes set out from Fort Chipewyan in search of the Pacific but on July 14 reached the Beaufort Sea instead. They returned home having discovered the "River Disappointment". It was Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin who first referred to it as the Mackenzie around 1827. The river country that Mackenzie discovered soon thereafter became the source of some of the richest, thickest animal pelts in North America. Posts were quickly built along the river and only those "in the black" survived. Fur-trade canoes were used in the early years, but after the 1821 amalgamation of the two rival companies, York boats began to appear. During the peak years of the 1850s, 11 posts were operating on the Mackenzie and its tributaries. Today, the river remains the artery of the fur trade as it exists today.

The boat on the lower-left corner is a “York boat”, more info on this type is given on viewtopic.php?p=14130&hilit=york+boat#p14130

https://postagestampguide.com/stamps/16 ... ur-traders
Canada 1994 43c sg, Scott 1513.
Attachments
1994 York boat- River---Imperf-Top (2).jpg
1994 York boat- River---Imperf-Top (2).jpg (78.81 KiB) Viewed 417 times

Post Reply