Canada - The Royal Geographical Society Collection

The Society’s archives comprise over 7,000 items specifically relating to the historical geography of Canada, dating from the 17th century to the present day. Highlights include early maps of Canada by Guillaume de L’Isle, a ruler made from the wood of one of the canoes from Samuel de Champlain's 1609 expedition and maps, manuscripts, watercolours and sketches relating to the exploration of the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage during the 19th century.

In the footsteps: Samuel de Champlain | In the footsteps: John Norman Collie | In the footsteps: John Linton Palmer

In the footsteps of: Samuel de Champlain

Samuel de Champlain was a 17th century French explorer and cartographer. Known as the “Father of New France”, Champlain played a major role in the establishment of New France between 1603 and 1635.
In 1603 Champlain began a voyage up the St. Lawrence River with his uncle, François Gravé du Pont, and carried out the most detailed survey of the river since Jacques Cartier in the 16th century. His surveys of the region resulted in his map ‘Carte de la Nouvelle France’ (1616), thought to be the earliest map of Canada. He is also credited with the founding of the city of Quebec in 1608, selecting a strategic site for the settlement at the narrowing of the St. Lawrence River estuary.

In the footsteps of: John Norman Collie

John Norman Collie was a pioneering chemist and mountaineer. In the late 1890s he joined the renowned chemist, Sir William Ramsay, as an assistant at University College London (UCL), where they conducted ground-breaking research into rare gases and where Collie made what was to be the first neon lamp. Collie also had a love of climbing and at the end of each university term he would venture to the Scottish Highlands, the Alps or the Himalayas.
In 1896 he made his first of several visits to the Canadian Rocky Mountains in search of Mount Hooker and Mount Brown, which had reportedly been sighted at a height of 15,000ft. Collie made a total of 21 first ascents, including Mount Victoria which he named after Queen Victoria, and eventually located Mount Hooker and Mount Brown at 9,000ft. Collie also explored the Columbia ice-field, the Bush river and the country between the headwaters of the Saskatchewan and the Columbia rivers.

In the footsteps of: John Linton Palmer

John Linton Palmer’s naval career involved several tours of duty in the Pacific between the years 1850 and 1868. As a naval surgeon, he developed an interest in natural history and ethnography and followed in the tradition of many earlier naval surgeons to create fine and detailed observational drawings and sketches of the people and places encountered on the tour.
His copiously annotated albums including sketches made of Pitcairn Island, Rapa Nui, Tahiti, China, Chile, Panama, Vancouver Island and the Bering Strait. His sketches of North-West Coast Indian and Inuit peoples, and their artefacts, reveals a highly developed interest in the detail of material cultures, providing a unique, pre-photographic record of the region at a very significant moment in the relations between settlers and First Peoples.