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 Īle.
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.
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted
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