Quest for the Northwest Passage

The dashing prince who did much to shape the direction of Canada was not your run-of-the-mill royal.

When it comes to the charting the world, a lot has changed since the age of discovery, when map-making relied heavily on imagination.

We asked five historians to come up with who they thought was Canada’s greatest explorer. Some of their picks were expected, some were not.

John Rae is not as well known as some of the other famous names of northern exploration — people like Sir John Franklin, for instance. But Ken McGoogan argues that Rae deserves greater recognition than he has received to date because of what he accomplished.