Map of the North-West Territory of the Province of Canada (1814)
Archives of Ontario, I0030317, David Thompson fonds
Reference Code: F 443, R-C(U), AO 1541

Surveying for the North West Company, David Thompson [1770–1857] located the headwaters of the Mississippi River, crossed the Rocky Mountains and mapped the entire length of the Columbia River.

Thompson retired from the fur trade in 1812 and moved his family to Terrebonne near Montreal. He was given a special assignment to plot all the Company’s posts on a comprehensive map of the Canadian West using the astronomical observations he had carefully recorded.

Thompson’s map is approximately 213 centimetres (84″) high by 328 centimetres (129″) long. It gave an accurate depiction of the vast territory traversed by the fur trade and location of Company posts.

James McEvoy [1862–1935] — Map showing the Yellowhead Pass route from Edmonton to Tête-Jaune Cache, 1900.

In 1898 McEvoy surveyed the Athabasca River valley for about 240 kilometres east of the Yellowhead Pass, and down the Fraser River on the west side of the pass for another 120 kilometres.

The splendid report of James McEvoy, published by the Geological Survey of Canada in 1900, dealing with the geology and natural history resources of the country traversed by the Yellowhead Pass route from Edmonton to Tête-Jaune Cache, contains the most comprehensive and reliable geographical information that has yet been published, and also contains the only geographical map published of that route on a sufficiently large scale to be of value.

— Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945], 1912

Canadian geologist Arthur Philomen Coleman [1852–1939] made extensive early explorations of the Canadian Rockies, including the first attempts to climb Mount Robson in 1907 and 1908.