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Index of first names

George Mellis Douglas

 

 

 

 

 

George Mellis Douglas (1875 - 1963) was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the son of Campbell Mellis Douglas and grandson of George Mellis Douglas of Grosse Île.  He moved with his family in 1883 to Northcote Farm on the shore of Katchiwano Lake north of Lakefield, Ontario.

 

George was an explorer by canoe of the remote Canadian Northwest and a well-known author. (His adventures are told in 'Lands Forlorn' published by the Knickerbocker Press, Putnams N.Y. 1914.)


In 1900 Douglas went to work for his cousin, James Douglas, who was president of the American Institute of Mining Engineers. In 1911, at the suggestion of his cousin James, an expedition to the Coppermine River and Arctic Sea was planned, and George Douglas along with his brother Lionel and Dr. August Sandberg made the trip. The purpose of the expedition was to search for minerals in the watershed of the Coppermine above the Arctic Circle. What Douglas and his associates discovered were huge copper deposits. Although it was known that the deposits existed since the 18th century, they were much larger than had been suspected. Douglas was also one of the first Barren Land explorers to extensively photograph the North West Territories and the Inuit who lived in the region.

Over the following thirty years, Douglas led copper explorations to the shores of the Arctic Sea and around the edges of the Great Bear and Great Slave Lakes. Douglas also wrote about his explorations in the Arctic. He published articles in several professional journals and in 1914 he wrote "Lands Forlorn", an account of the 1911-12 expedition.

 In 1937 he was living at Lakeside, Ontario and a snapshot taken 5 years earlier shows him, lean and bronzed, with white hair, standing beside his canoe.

 

George Mellis Douglas died in his sleep at his home near Lakefield in 1963.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Last modified: Monday, 25 March 2024