John McLean (–1890) was a Scotsman who emigrated to British North America, where he became a fur-trapper, trader, explorer, grocer, banker, newspaperman, clerk, and author. He travelled by foot and canoe from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back, becoming one of the chief traders of the Hudson's Bay Company. He is remembered as the first person of European descent to discover Churchill Falls on Canada's Churchill River and sometimes mistakenly credited as the first to cross the Labrador Peninsula. Long overlooked, his first-person accounts of early 19th-century fur trading in Canada are now valued by historians. Under the pen name Viator (Latin for "Traveller"), his letters to newspapers around Canada also helped shift public opinion away from yielding the western territories to the United States during the Alabama Claims dispute over damages for British involvement in the American Civil War.

Life Early life

John McLean was born in Dervaig or beside the Loch Bà on the Isle of Mull in Britain in 1797,. on 24 July 1798, in 1799, or on 14 December 1800.

With the North West Company He joined the North West Company in the winter of 1820, reaching Montreal in January 1821. Before leaving for his three-year apprenticeship in May, he studied French for several months with two other trappers under the anglophile curate of St Michel d'Yamaska, Pierre Gibert. The same year, the NWC merged with its long-time rival the Hudson's Bay Company. McLean's apprenticeship transferred to the new company, but his memoirs show that he never abandoned his preference for the old one: "From 1674 to 1813 the Hudson's Bay Company slumbered at its posts along the shores of Hudson's Bay, never attempting to penetrate beyond the banks of the Saskatchewan, until the North-Westers led and cleared the way"... "the chief advantages the Hudson's Bay Company now possess, they owe to the adventurous North-West traders; by these traders the whole interior of the savage wilds was first explored; by them the water communications were first discovered and opened up to commercial enterprise; by them the first trading posts were established in the interior; by them the natives were first reconciled with the whites; and by them the trade was first reduced to the regular system which the Hudson's Bay Company still follows. When all this had been done by the North-West Company, and they had begun to reap the rewards of their toils, and hardships, and dangers, and expenditure,then did the Honourable Hudson's Bay Company, led on by a British peer, step forward and claim, as British subjects, an equal right to share the trade."

With the Hudson's Bay Company

Ottawa River John McLean entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company at a most interesting and critical time in its history, during the strife between the Hudson's Bay and North West Companies. He worked on the Ottawa Riverthe present-day border between Quebec and Ontariountil 1833. During his apprenticeship, he moved progressively further upcountry, from Lake of Two Mountains, to Chats Falls in April 1822, to Fort Coulonge in June 1823. He then directed a post at Lac de Sable on the Lièvre in the wilderness north of Ottawa and Montreal. He spent nine years fending off company rivals, cultivating relations with indigenous trappers, and improving the post's profitability only to be removed to a new territory once things had become easy. He lamented that he "had now served the Hudson's Bay Company faithfully and zealously for a period of twelve years, leading a life of hardship and toil, of which no idea can be formed except by those whose hard lot it may be to know it by experience... what was my reward? I had no sooner succeeded in freeing my district from opposition, than I was ordered to resign my situation to another who would enjoy the results of my labour." McLean's account of his journey across the continent is another of those invaluable accounts that enable us to piece together the history of the Canadian North-west in its earlier days.

New Caledonia Ordered to the Western Department on the Pacific, he travelledmostly by canoefrom Montreal up the Ottawa, crossed Lake Nipissing to the French River and the sheltered northern bays of Lake Huron, passed Sault Ste Marie into Lake Superior and Fort William on Thunder Bay, stopped on the north shore of Lake Winnipeg at Norway House in Rupert's Land (now Manitoba) for further orders, and finally followed thempast Cumberland House in present-day Saskatchewan and Athabasca and Fort Dunvegan in present-day Alberta and down the Peace Riverto New Caledonia (present-day British Columbia), where he expected "to fare like a dog". Reaching Fort St James on Stuart Lake on 28 October 1833,. however, he had nothing but praise"I do not know that I have seen anything to compare with this charming prospect in any other part of the country; its beauties struck me even at this season of the year, when nature having partially assumed her hybernal dress, everything appeared to so much greater advantage." He also complemented Fort Alexandria on the Fraser, his post from March to May the next year, for its scenery, friendly indigenous neighbours, and good food. In September 1834 or 1835, he went to Prince George, then known as Fort George, whose former trader's servants had all been massacred by the locals a few years earlier but which McLean reported as peaceable and prosperous during his time there.

Having received permission from the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company to return to headquarters, McLean departed Stuart Lake on 22 February 1837. He passed Fort Alexandria on 8 March, Kamloops on 18 March, Onkanagan on 28 March, and Colville on 12 April. Reaching Norway House in June, he found Governor George Simpson holding the council for the company's Northern Department. McLean, although eligible, was passed over for promotion to chief trader in favour of two other agents. He took this as a personal slight from Gov. Simpson, but Simpson's personal records seem to be complimentary and indicate he was simply following seniority. While at Norway House, McLean married the Métis Margaret Charles; they had one child together, John McLean Junior, before she died the following year. He reached the company headquarters at York Factory in July, eventually receiving instructions to replace Erland Erlandson as the factor of the Ungava District, recently established based on the praise of the area by the Moravian missionaries Kohlmeister and Kmoch following their 1811 visit.

Ungava Bay At his base at Fort Chimo (present-day Kuujjuaq, Quebec) up the South River (present-day Koksoak River) from South (Ungava) Bay, McLean was only contacted and resupplied from the outside world by brig. once a year. "Surrounded by a country that presents as complete a picture of desolation as can be imagined", he avoided lingering there and instead personally led expeditions southeast across the Labrador Peninsula in an attempt to establish overland contact with Fort Smith (present-day North West River, Labrador) at the mouth of the Naskaupi River on Lake Melville, the furthest extent of Esquimaux Bay (now Hamilton Inlet). He expected discovering such a route would lead to his promotion within the company, and his predecessor Erlandson had already accidentally demonstrated its feasibility in 1834 when his attempt to reach Mingan on the St Lawrence had been redirected to Lake Melville by his five Innu guides... On 2 January 1838, he and his men headed out on dogsleds. to take a route up the Koksoak from Erlandson's maps and reports, following the Caniapiscau and Swampy Bay Rivers to Lake Michikamau and the Naskaupi, reaching Fort Smith on 16 February, having taken 46 days to cover . On the way back, their guides fell sick with severe flu and became delirious with fever; game became scarce; and McLean divided his party, taking few provisions and running ahead with a clerk to send supplies back to the rest. Meeting no food on the way, one sled dog starved to death and the two were obliged to eat the other"what we considered, in present circumstances, 'food for the gods'"to make it back to Fort Chimo. The first party sent south from the fort returned with only one of the missing men, and McLean was obliged to send a second group who returned with the rest of them on 26 April. Having established that the known routes to Hamilton Inlet were impractical, he learned from the locals about the George River to the east. He founded Fort Siveright (present-day Kangiqsualujjuaq) on the eastern shore of its mouth to serve as a salmon and seal fishery... He sent a team under Erlandson to Indian Head Lake to establish Fort Trial as a waystation and depot for the supply route to for outposts further south.

After the Koksoak cleared of ice on 25 June 1839,. McLean travelled up Ungava Bay to the George River, which they followed despite its low water until its head of navigation. They then passed overland to where Erlandson had established Fort Nascopie on Petitsikapau Lake. Attempting to complete the route without Innu guides, they got lost and reached the upper Churchill, discovering the Grand Falls (now Churchill Falls). McLean considered it "stupendous" and "one of the grandest spectacles in the world", although a hydroelectric project subsequently almost eliminated its flow after 1970. Compelled to return, they reached Fort Chimo on 20 September.

He attempted a different route the next year, while William Henry Allen Davies of the company's Esquimaux Bay District led an expedition up the Churchill from Fort Smith. Realizing that Davies had reached almost as far as Churchill Falls, McLean was able to use his report and friendly advice from indigenous locals. to find a route up the George, through a series of lakes around the falls, and along the Naskaupi to Lake Melville in 1841. The company immediately adopted this final route and promoted McLean to chief trader. (Further exploration from Fort Smith eventually showed that the route sought by Finlayson and Erlandson leading directly from Ungava Bay to the St Lawrence was completely impracticable, the forests southwest of Lake Melville being too boggy for travel and their lakes too shallow for the large trading canoes used by the HBC.)

Although a more efficient route had now been established, the Hudson's Bay Company still found the Ungava District unprofitable and Gov. Simpson ordered that its ships be sent only every other year. The company opted against giving the district a proper cartographer and contented itself with rough sketch maps, like that compiled under McLean's direction in 1840. McLean's inland route continued to be used, but to supply Fort Nascopie from the south. Feeling isolated and abandoned, McLean took the first furlough in his career, leaving Fort Chimo in 1842 to visit his mother in Scotland, passing York Factory, New York, and Montreal on his route.. The forts he had established were abandoned. The entire Ungava District was eliminated in 1843, while from May to June McLean led a team including a royal magnetic survey under John Henry Lefroy from Lachine (in present-day Quebec) to Norway House. Lefroy reported him "a person of intelligence and information beyond what one might expect from a man who has all his life been scraping beaver skins together at remote stations" and complimented his flute playing.

Mackenzie River