Canoeing a Continent: On the Trail of Alexander Mackenzie

A highly personal account of the travels of Max Finkelstein as he retraces, some two hundred years later, the route of Alexander Mackenzie, the first European to cross North America (1793). Mackenzie’s water trail is now commemorated as the Alexander Mackenzie Voyageur Route. More than just a travelogue of a canoe trip across Canada, this is an account that crosses more than two centuries. It is an exploration into the heart and mind of Alexander Mackenzie, the explorer, and Max Finkelstein, the ‘Voyageur-in-Training’. Using Mackenzie’s diaries and his own journal writings, the author creates a view of the land from two vantage points. The author retraced the route of Alexander Mackenzie across North America from Ottawa through to Cumberland House, Saskatchewan, and paddled the Blackwater, Fraser and Peace Rivers, completing the trip in 1999. This route is the most significant water trail in North America, and perhaps the world.