George Back to the Rescue

Although British Navy Commander George Back, born in 1795, was a professional seaman, many of his days were spent on land, rivers and inland lakes, exploring the vast wilderness that stretched between the Athabasca Region and the Arctic Coast. As a participant in both of John Franklin’s overland expeditions to the Arctic (1820 and 1825), and in 2 more northern expeditions under his own command, Back gained a reputation for bravery, competence and endurance. (The Back River, which crosses from the Northwest Territories into Nunavut, is named in his honour.) With the shores of Great Slave Lake as a backdrop, Back participated in 3 difficult and dramatic rescue missions during his career as a wilderness explorer:

• In the winter of 1820, Back made a round-trip journey of almost 1,800 kilometres, from Fort Enterprise deep in the Northwest Territories, to Fort Chipewyan, in northern Alberta, when John Franklin’s first Arctic expedition ran short of supplies. It was a cold and difficult ordeal, marked by heavy snowstorms and frequent falls through thin ice. Back was bitterly disappointed, upon reaching the north shore of Great Slave Lake at Fort Providence, to learn that he would have to travel even further south to obtain his goods. Like Alexander Mackenzie before him, Back was dismayed by the ice-choked waters of Great Slave Lake: “We set out on the lake with an excessively cold N.W. wind and were frequently interrupted by large pieces of ice which had been thrown up by the violence of the waves…in attempting to cross one of the openings in the ice the dogs fell into the water and were rescued with difficulty. The poor animal suffered dreadfully…” Back credited his Yellowknife guides with saving their lives with an emergency supply of pemmican.

• In the fall of 1821, when Franklin’s party met with exhaustion and starvation on their return from the Coppermine River, George Back set off in search of help. He successfully located native guides, who led the group’s survivors to safety at Fort Providence.

• In 1833, Back was sent to locate Captain John Ross, who had not been seen since he had sailed in search of the Northwest Passage in 1829. By winter, Back and his rescue party had reached the East Arm of Great Slave Lake, where they built Fort Reliance at the mouth of the Lockhart River. Here they waited out the winter in “great distress,” shivering through record-breaking cold temperatures and a mystifying absence of fish and game. “During the whole season,” wrote Back, “scarcely a living creature has been seen…” In the spring of 1834, Back received word that Ross had been found safe; he went on to devote the remainder of the year to scientific exploration, with supplies provided by the Hudson’s Bay Company.