There are places on earth that are so vast they still impress upon us the power of nature.
The immense, rugged and varied terrain of Canada never fails to astound me.
This is a record of my journey across this magnificent land and back into its history.
A history written by explorers who should be household names
in their native Britain, but are as unknown as the land they encountered.
Canada is a country that was built on the skills of the land,
traditional bush craft, understanding nature and survival in the harshest of environments.
This isn't a survival series.
It's about how those skills and that knowledge were used to do
something quite different, something remarkable - to explore a country.
And in Canada's Arctic North, there's one explorer whose name stands out, John Rae.
This is St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall in the Orkney Isles.
I've come here because of a man that I consider should be one of our country's most celebrated figures.
A Scotsman born nearby in 1813 and buried here in 1893.
This is the memorial to Dr John Rae, a medical doctor who, in my opinion,
was the greatest Arctic explorer ever.
This is the man who succeeded where so many had failed.
The man who found the final link in the holy grail of 19th-century exploration, the Northwest Passage.
And yet, while other lesser explorers were being given medals and knighthoods,
Rae was shunned by society and, even today, his achievements go largely unrecognised.
It's time to set the record straight,
time for me to explore the life of an unsung British hero.
This is the Hall of Clestrain on Orkney.
This was the birthplace of John Rae and it's really important to come here
to get a sense of the man.
It's hard to imagine today that this building would once have been an incredible Georgian structure,
very impressive, but you can see how the weather over the centuries has really taken its toll,
and that weather is actually a part of the story of John Rae,
because he was an Orcadian born and bred.
It was across these hills that he used to stride at great speed to shoot grouse
and through the sounds here he used to race boats,
developing boating skills that in later years he'd be celebrated for.
But perhaps the most important thing was the spirit of the place.
See, Orcadians are islanders,
they're exposed to the whims of nature and they have to deal with that with a degree of stoicism.
That stoicism is something that Rae took with him to Canada
and recognised in the native people he learned to travel with and to trust.
These qualities were not lost on the Hudson's Bay Company,
the British fur trade company that owned and ruled much of Canada.
This was the place their ships came to recruit
as they filled up from the last available fresh water
on the route from London to their bases on the shores of Hudson's Bay in Canada.
This is Login's Well, it's a very historic place.
You can still see plenty of clear water in here today.
This is where the Hudson's Bay Company ships used to fill up from. They'd fill their tanks from here.
It's a very special place. It wasn't just the Hudson's Bay Company that stopped here.
A lot of very famous ships, including Captain Cook, both the Resolution and the Discovery,
stopped here to fill their tanks. It's amazing.
This fixed point on the journey from London to Canada
created a special link between the Hudson's Bay Company and Orcadians.
Janette Park is curator at the Stromness Museum in Orkney.
Tell me about the history of the Hudson's Bay Company and Orkney.
It's got a very strong connection to Orkney.
Quite a lot of the workforce was recruited in Stromness.
John Rae's dad was actually a recruitment officer.
A lot of the young men that were brought up in Orkney,
it was big families, it was the family croft
and the eldest son would inherit the croft and the other sons would have to make their own way in the world,
and a good way of doing that was signing on for a term of employment with the Hudson Bay.
If you did a seven year stretch out there, you would earn enough money
to come back and maybe buy your own piece of land and marry and settle down and set up.
So it's a good way to better yourself when you came home.
It provided a great opportunity. Oh, it did, yeah. It was taken up by a lot of men.
And what do you think were the qualities amongst the Orcadians
that the Hudson's Bay Company recognised and liked?
Well, I think a lot of the Orkney men that went there were,
I think it's been quoted as being of a sober disposition and hard working
and probably kept in mind why they were there and what they were doing.
Orkney is actually further north than Churchill the company's main base in Canada.
It's said that Orcadians often remarked, only half jokingly,
that they travelled to Churchill for the warmth.
After qualifying as a doctor, Rae, like so many Orcadians before him, joined the Hudson's Bay Company.
But his was to be no ordinary career.
Although he made his name in the Arctic, that success was built
on foundations laid down in his early years working as a doctor further south in the woods of Canada.
His work involved tending to both the European and the Indian employees of the company
and he travelled with an open mind.
When John Rae came here, he saw the wisdom that existed in the life skills of the people he encountered,
the indigenous populations of Canada, and he went to great efforts,
not to just buy from them the tools that he needed,
he learned from them how to employ those techniques, how to make repairs
and how to make the tools himself so that he became just as skilful as they were,
and this was one of the keys to his success as an explorer.
This is the Canadian winter.
The only way for Rae to reach his patients was by snowshoe.
Like so many things in his life, he quickly mastered the technique.
There are stories of him walking half the night
to catch up with the postman because he'd forgotten to post a letter.
He became so proficient that he even made his own snowshoes to cope
with the variety of environments and conditions that he encountered.
There's no doubting his commitment to life here.
He clearly respected the craft skills of the locals.
I'd like to learn more, so I'm going to spend a couple of days making a close replica of Rae's snowshoes
with Pinock Smith, an Algonquin craftsman who I worked with a few years ago.
We start with an ash log.
Here we go again, Pinock.
Splitting. All your projects start like this, don't they?
It's the easiest way to do it. It's good to be working with you again.
That's going real sweet.
Open it up? Yep.
The last time I worked with Pinock, we built a birch bark canoe together
and it took longer than anticipated to film everything and do it,
so, on this occasion, I've asked him to come prepared.
And this is what you've brought with you.
So that's an eighth...
and then that's been split again taken down to produce this,
which is really the point at which all the work starts.
Now we're going to start using our crooked knife to shape this to the size we want. Yeah.
First, we're gonna taper the ends? Yeah, we want to taper this off
so when we put them together, it'll come to about that width.
But we don't want to taper it off an extreme taper, we'd like it to come gradually
so that when we put it together, we don't have this thing, it has a tendency to crack off sometimes.
This was the world Rae embraced,
a world without tape measures where everything's judged by eye. But it's no less precise.
Mine's a little thick yet.
This is how Rae learned to live here, by working with the craftsmen that surrounded him.
I reckon that's the second taper done on mine, looks all right, doesn't it?
We'll get away with that.
Tie it together, laminate it...
Got a little whiskeyjack there. Better feed your bird there.
They're funny, aren't they?
Come on, you know you want it.
The locals say it's good luck to feed the whiskeyjack.
It means they'll clear up the camp for you after you leave.
My hands are getting a bit cold now. It's a bit windy, isn't it?
I'll put the shavings on the fire.
Since I was a child, I've loved the smell of burning ash. It's almost as rewarding as the carving itself.
With conditions worsening and a temperature of minus 34, it's time to go inside.
I want these snowshoes to be as close to Rae's as possible.
On this trip, I want to know what it feels like to, literally, walk in his snowshoes.
I sent Pinock a picture with the dimensions of Rae's snowshoes.
But when you're working like this, inevitably, every pair is different.
Very lightweight and very hard, so this is very, very good snowshoe.
That should be a better fit, flatten this one down, it wasn't so flat.
OK.
Let's have a look.
Are you happy with that?
That's the frame ready.
This temporary brace is set at roughly the same width as Rae's.
Next, we bind them with rawhide - un-tanned animal skin.
Then we'll have to, we want to close this about here.
Keep it. Tie it. Tie it up.
Why are you using rawhide?
As it dries, it's gonna start tightening up more and it'll hold it together for us.
It's also something that we already have cos we're using a lot of it for the lacing.
Traditional material from the.... We're not gonna go out and buy the twine to do it, we have it here.
Rae's snowshoe design incorporated a distinctive curve at the front to stop them sticking in the snow.
To achieve this in the time we've got available,
we're going to laminate the wood.
That means splitting it so that it will take the curve more easily.
Rae's would have been soaked and steamed over several days.
OK, now we can try bending it around. That looks a lot better.
Tight, huh?
I gave you all the hard work. That's all right. Younger person.
Wow, look at that. Pretty good. It looks all right, doesn't it? It's very good.
Now we have to twin this up with another one, but you've already prepared some earlier.
Cos you complained about last time. That's not true.
OK, show me the next step.
Right, so you've got two frames, and you've spread them up here.
This is to hold these two together when you bend them, you don't want the bend to come down any further.
That's...so that's like a clamp, a primitive clamp.
And these gauges here in our clamps and everything, we always...
I've never seen anybody keep 'em. They're thrown out and burnt or whatever, because every time we...
we make snowshoes they're always different size anyway, so we end up throwing them out.
You know, that's because you're not standardised, Pinock. Oh, yes, trust you to say that.
With the basic frame complete, we can remove the brace and fit the cross pieces.
And this piece, we'll put up about two thirds of the way,
for balance of the shoe. Does that look like two thirds?
Cos remember it's all eyeball.
Yeah. OK, you can scribe that on the inside there.
Rae was not a man to compromise on quality.
So he used five cross pieces for strength and durability.
If this first one is in the wrong place, the snowshoes simply won't work properly.
So obviously, if there's the snowshoe, as you lift your foot,
it needs to tip so the nose comes out and doesn't dig into the snow.
Rae's snowshoes were so effective he became known as Aglooka - he who takes long strides.
His most incredible feat was to walk 1,200 miles across the winter forest
in just two months to meet a man who could teach him how to survey.
The transformation from doctor to explorer had already begun.
The more you put into this way of life, the more rewarding it becomes.
I've rounded off the edges of these cross bars and the reason for that
is, when the snowshoe's laced up, the rawhide lacing will pass around this.
I don't want any sharp edges that could cause it to wear through.
They're looking quite good. Again, it just shows you how versatile a crooked knife is.
Crooked knives come in all different shapes of bend in the end there.
This is particularly good for doing spoons and cups and that curved part
enables you to put a nice round shape onto the wood. It's really versatile.
Rae knew that the knowledge of how to do things was the key to life here.
That's what I like about Pinock.
With a couple of tools, he can make whatever he needs, working steadily day after day.
Well, it's been a very satisfying day, I really enjoy this sort of craft work.
One of the things I find really interesting about working with Pinock who has the benefit
of an Algonquin Indian heritage is that the way he makes snowshoes is very simple.
A lot of people would make a snowshoe like this on a complex jig which is a more modern approach to making them.
His is the way of the forest where you make very simple clamps from little sticks as you go.
And it makes me think of John Rae as well because this is very much
what he encountered when he was here in Canada.
In John Rae's time, women wove the hide or babiche for his snowshoes.
Today Pinock does the whole thing.
Oh, we'll just start in the middle any place, doesn't matter where.
Go in, pull it through,
Once you're in, start here, and all I do is I come across again, go into this hole here.
The pace of this work is really helping me to connect to the world Rae lived in.
I think I ought to start one.
Go to the end, push him down right through.
Bring your string over.
Which way do I pull out with that one? On this side.
Then you go in from the top, down here, through here.
That's the one, down there, up again and then back up again.
Yep, that's it. Now again,
over, under this one, again over these, under this one,
under that one, under this one here as well.
'Don't worry. I'm getting lost too.'
Now let me see if I can figure this out, cos this is the tricky bit.
So...oh, yeah, so now, I guess, it's going over one, under one,
over one, like before, because that's all we've got left.
But we want to stay on this side. so you're gonna pick up...
I go in there, yeah? That's it, yep.
There. And then you come right back off the side of it,
right in front of it, right there.
And go right back down again, you gotta cut next...no, this one.
Right there, right beside it. Right back out. That one?
Yep, go right back down again.
And come out in the other, there.
It's a tricky business.
My appreciation of the skill involved is growing with every stitch.
I've watched an old Indian woman make the most amazing pair of snowshoes
and I watched her hands go like a sewing machine, and it's so skilful.
I mean, it's simple but there are lots of mistakes you can make.
Very easy to make a mistake. I mean, I'm going dizzy doing this.
Now I, well, anyway, not bad for a first attempt.
Not bad for a novice. But nowhere near as good as Pinock's.
It takes him most of the day to complete the webbing.
Rae used an incredibly fine weave,
his shoes were designed for speed and they were built to last.
Rae was obviously a man who was keen to go places.
So these are the finished snowshoes. That pattern of babiche, of rawhide, is beautiful.
As that dries, it shrinks a little bit and tightens it all up, pulls it together.
Sounds like a tennis racket now. Just one job remains and that's to put the binding on.
So this is the moment of truth - trying the snowshoes.
When the bindings are new, they're a little bit more fiddly.
Once you've used them for a while they settle down and are very easy then to put on.
You push your toe through,
till it's round your heel, then you can angle your toe in.
Now, as I use them they will stretch. but they'll also settle down,
Once the binding's settled down, you can put them on and off without even having to use your hands.
Let's try them out.
They're very good.
Very light. It's like walking on two feathers in the snow.
John Rae is quoted as saying, "A long day's march on snowshoes is about the finest exercise a man can take."
When he wasn't working, he would be out using his snowshoes,
learning how to hunt everything from grouse to caribou.
But this wasn't just a pastime.
Perhaps the most important thing about John Rae as an explorer,
certainly in my mind, was his ability to truly take care of himself on the land.
A lot of other explorers relied upon Indian guides, local guides to help them to find food,
but Rae took a pride in being able to find food for himself and live off the country.
This is his gun. It's not known whether he took it on expeditions but he certainly used it in later life.
It tells me something about the man. It's a plain gun but of good quality, it's very light and wieldy.
It's exactly the sort of thing that you would want to carry with you on that sort of expedition.
It was his strength, his self reliance and his clarity of purpose that meant, in 1845,
John Rae was chosen by the Hudson's Bay Company to lead an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage
by filling in the last blanks on the maps of the northern coast.
He was headed for the Arctic.
As a woodsman, this landscape makes me feel rather exposed and it must have been the same for John Rae.
He'd learned his skills of travelling in the north land
in amongst the trees and the forests with the forest Indians,
and now here he is in this landscape where, instead of trees, there's ice and snow.
Canada's Arctic coast was becoming an obsession.
The Northwest Passage could revolutionise sea trade to the far East.
A route across the top of Canada offered an alternative
to the otherwise hazardous journey through French and Spanish waters.
By the mid-19th century, much of the route had been mapped.
But this far north, the sea freezes for months and every attempt
to complete the passage had come up against the immovable sea ice.
The Royal Navy were determined to complete the task.
But the search is incorporated in the Hudson's Bay Company charter.
They had John Rae marked as their best hope.
His would be the first Arctic overland attempt to solve the riddle.
At the time, the Arctic mainland was an unknown entity.
Rae and his men were the first Europeans ever to spend a winter here.
Their survey, filling in the blanks on the map, brought them here, to a place they called Pelly Bay.
To explore the world Rae encountered,
I'm going to be working with members of the Canadian Rangers, the Canadian army's eyes and ears in the north.
Rae was on foot, hauling a sledge.
But this is the way to travel today.
To many people, these are playthings.
But they're just the tractors of the north
and after a few hours travelling on one through minus 30, that's exactly what they feel like.
From the outset, Rae was different.
He travelled to the Arctic with only a few months of supplies, even though he intended to stay over a year.
He was going to live off the land, just like the people up here.
Ranger Liederik is going to be my interpreter.
We're out on the frozen sea ice that proved such a barrier to ship-based expeditions.
Cold day today. Yeah, windy.
Very windy, we're lucky here, in the lee of this island.
Out there, that's not easy travelling, is it? No, it's not.
And you guys get cold like everyone else, don't you? Yes, we do.
I've brought warming tea, Liederik's providing the snack - frozen char.
A lot of people will think that this would make you cold, but it doesn't, does it?
No, when you first eat it, it feels cold
but...maybe half an hour later, you start to feel warm.
It's lovely, beautiful.
Tell me about your traditional fishing spear.
Our traditional ones, we use this one.
It's called kakivak...
We make a hole in...
..make a hole and we just put that in, er...
in a hole like that, and we wait for the fish to go by,
and that's... You spear them.
You're using some modern materials here, some electrical tape and things to make it,
but this isn't, is it? What's that there? That's a musk ox horn.
And that's still better than modern materials? Yes.
And does it have that shape naturally or have you carved that that shape?
Have to carve it like that. They carve it like that.
It's not so long ago that the people here relied on their traditional skills.
This archive film is from the 1960s and shows a way of life
that had hardly changed from the world Rae would have encountered.
In winter and in summer, caribou are essential to life here.
They provide food, clothing and tools.
John Rae relied on them too.
In the autumn, when much of the snow has melted the kakivak spear comes into its own on these weirs.
Knowing how to find food all year round was knowledge that was crucial to Rae's expeditions.
DRUMMING
This landscape has to be one of the hardest places to come and make a documentary.
Just standing here talking to you, my face is absolutely freezing.
It's actually quite a warm day as the Arctic goes - it's only minus 24.
A few days ago in the forest, I was in minus 40.
But with the wind, it's a completely different ball game
and exposed flesh is very, very vulnerable to cold injuries.
Rae knew that and he knew that one of the most important things was learning how to find or make shelter.
He implored all of the people who went on exhibitions with him
to learn how to do things the local way, and that meant the snow house or igloo.
Levy, an elder here, is using his harpoon to test the snow.
Because when you look at it, you just seem to see this go in,
but actually what he's feeling for, the top is soft
and then there's a layer of harder snow underneath.
They're removing the top soft snow cos that's no good for igloo building.
But building an igloo isn't always straightforward,
and this snow is too crumbly.
He doesn't like the snow.
No. The vagaries of snow are such that just a hundred yards away we find the perfect conditions.
It's 13 years since I last had a go
at building an igloo, so I can expect to be quite a bit rusty, I think.
And I've just been shown a tip.
If I score a groove in both sides of the snowblock,
you can get hold of it easier.
Like that. They're quite heavy.
Is that all right. Yep.
Good, good.
Ah, the foreman says that's good.
The first block will be that one.
It's gonna be the first block.
When Rae first arrived in the Arctic,
he fell back on Orcadian traditions, building a hut out of stone.
He didn't know any better. But it was the wrong technology in the wrong place.
When Rae saw the insulation an igloo provides,
he quickly made it his business to learn how to make them.
Piece by piece, he was acquiring the skills needed for life this far North.
Here first?
Yeah.
OK.
Let's have a look.
I am remembering the blocks have to stick in three places,
up here, down here and down there,
so three points of contact,
and then they stick together, and that's the tool that's used,
the snow knife - it's just a butcher's knife
and they've fitted their own handle.
This handle's a fantastic shape cos you can hold it with mitts,
like that, and can use two hands with it,
or you can use one hand as well, and this is the most important tool.
In the jungle, it's the machete. In the high Arctic, no Inuit leaves home
without his snow knife - it's the most important thing. They can break through the ice with this,
can make an igloo with it, they can cut up their meat with it, brilliant.
There's that lovely sound.
You should try and make it same shape as the next block all the time, you try and make it tight.
That way it's easier to work on.
That's easier said than done.
The other two blocks I did went in so easily.
What am I doing wrong?
Not quite right - you show me what I've done wrong.
He's looking on disapprovingly.
When I watch Levy, I see a lifetime of experience and skill
shaping every block.
Just like that. You done this before?
Watching the master at work now, going to have a go,
watch a little bit, have another go, you get better all the time.
As the wall starts to go up, we're already now getting
that windbreak effect, which is very welcome today.
It's incredible.
This is the bit that always astonishes me, it looks like it defies belief, doesn't it?
Very, very clever how it all locks together.
The igloo to me is one of the most incredible marvels of human achievement.
There are a few things that, if I had a time machine, I'd like to go back
and see - one is the first man to make fire by friction
and the other is the first Inuit who mastered this complicated technique
of building it - it's incredibly clever.
Yes, that is our steam.
It shows just how much insulation these structures provide.
Rae is on record as choosing to sleep alone in his igloo.
It may have been colder, but he couldn't bear the smoke of his crew's pipes.
He kept his books and ink in his sleeping bag to stop them from freezing.
He was some man.
It's been a real insight
to get a masterclass from someone as talented as Levy.
Levy, for me it's been a real privilege to be here and to see
you at work in this environment and,
if there's only thing, one thing I really can say, that's "qujannamiik".
Tell him I'm very glad I was able to teach him everything
about the Arctic - if he ever needs me to come back, I'm happy.
Ah yes, definitely I'm very grateful for his kind offer
of his snowmobile, his Kamiks, his parka, I will take very good care
of these things when I take them back to England with me.
Thank you.
TRANSLATION: I tell you what, you give me your fancy clothes and I'll happily give you my old ones.
Using the snow to build their homes and finding food from the land
were key to Rae's ability to travel up here.
He was working with the elements, not against them.
The people Rae met were not just surviving.
He experienced a land with a rich culture.
A culture that continues to evolve and that I'm being treated to today.
This throat singing reminds me of singing I've heard in Mongolia -
it seems very similar.
RHYTHMIC BREATHING AND VOCALISING
Very good. Is there a song, a rhythm that you're following
or is one of you trying to catch the other one, or...?
It's kind of both. You're leading and then you've got to keep up.
Yeah. OK. I think... OK, right, I'm listening out now. It sounds like there's more,
more than two of you in here, it sounds like there are three or four people in here.
It's amazing, how do you make that, you've got two sounds,
cos you're making a musical sound and then there's that, that, that throat sound,
EXHALES SHE VOCALISES: Um... can I hear just one of you?
Um, ah!
I don't think I'd be any good at this at all.
It's very good, it's fantastic, it's a very strange sound,
but it kind of belongs here in the North. doesn't it?
Can I hear some more, cos I think it's great.
THEY SING
Today Pelly Bay is called Kugaaruk.
The people here are making sure the skills and knowledge continue.
Once a week, elders visit the school.
The kuglik is the traditional stove and heater for an igloo.
Nets, of course, were and are vitally important
for people who live on the coast.
It's not all about survival though - there were tricks to learn, too.
Wood is a relatively new resource in a land without trees.
Inuit sledges were once made from frozen fish wrapped in skin
with cross members of antler tied together with seal skin.
This is a fabulous place. It's given me a glimpse into the kind of people and lifestyles
Rae would have come across on his travels.
They start them young here.
Actually this a mother and toddler class, Inuit style.
Sophie, can you tell me what are you are teaching the young women?
TRANSLATION: I'm teaching them how to use this tool in order to make the skin softer.
I've worn caribou clothing and I know how good this is,
but I think people who aren't used to it are surprised
that you are still using these traditional methods.
Well, these clothes are the warmest you can get in the winter. A fact that was not lost on Rae.
And you don't tan the skins,
you just soften the skins.
When you finish with the scraper, you rub warm water into the skin.
Then you fold it, tie it with rope and leave it for about 24 hours,
then you untie it and it's beautifully soft.
When Rae adopted the snow house, he also adopted Inuit clothing,
in fact, he'd been using local clothing for some time.
There was great wisdom in that, because the two technologies go together.
Here's some caribou clothing and one of the secrets to the success
of this clothing is that the skin side is close to your body,
and it's warm, and that means that your body perspiration
can pass through it and it collects in the fur
on the outside of the garment.
Now if you bring that into the main chamber of the igloo when it's heated, the frost melts,
and is drawn by capillary action up into the insulative underhair
close to the skin and when you go out again, it would freeze like ice.
By leaving it in the porch, any moisture freezes
in the outermost layer of the hair, which can simply be brushed away in the morning - it's fantastic,
it's so simple and so effective - a completely windproof garment that breathes and is also insulative.
Now, modern clothing just doesn't function like this, all of these garments we've got here,
even if we were to bring them into the igloo overnight,
with the traditional lantern going in here, there's no way we can get
this environment warm enough to dry our clothing
and get the moisture out of them.
That was one of the keys to his success - he had both bits of technology, insulative snow houses
and the right clothing that worked with it.
That meant he could go a long distance without too much hardship.
Caribou clothing was the final element
that brought John Rae the freedom to explore where others feared to tread.
Rae and his men completed their expedition, a 600-mile round trip.
He may not have found the passage yet, but the blanks
in the map were getting smaller and smaller.
However, in 1845, the Royal Navy despatched their own expedition by sea, led by Sir John Franklin -
the competition to find the passage was hotting up.
When Rae left here he'd already established his credentials as an Arctic explorer -
it was then that he was to become involved with the folly of the Franklin expedition...
An expedition that was to dog his career for the rest of his life.
I find it irritating that I even have to mention Franklin's name
in association with Rae's. Sir John Franklin was a senior naval officer.
He set sail with two ships, Erebus and Terror,
equipped with everything so-called modern science could provide -
steam power, strengthened hulls, even tinned food.
With the full backing of the Royal Navy, this was the expedition that
everyone expected to complete the search for the Northwest Passage.
But Franklin was not a man who could adapt to conditions.
He reflected the Victorian attitude of superiority.
A ship with several years of supplies of tinned food had no need of local knowledge.
But Franklin went missing, and a massive search for him began.
At one point, it's estimated 15 ships and 500 men were looking for him.
In fact, in 1848, Rae was ordered to join one such expedition,
searching for Franklin by land.
'The land he was headed for is already familiar to me.'
It's the same area that Samuel Hearne explored in the previous century.
I visited here travelling in his footsteps.
Hearne was another Hudson's Bay Company explorer.
He pioneered the use of indigenous skills and knowledge for exploration.
He recorded his experiences in a journal.
A journal that Rae is likely to have read -
I can't believe it's just coincidence that he employed exactly the same approach.
This is Tlicho land - people both Hearne and Rae met on their journeys.
It's really nice to be back with the Tlicho, in the winter,
and they've really kindly set up this camp for us,
to be able to show us some of their traditional winter skills.
We've come into the bush here about halfway between the Great Slave Lake
and Great Bear Lake, and it's about -20, something like that.
It'll be a lot colder at night, and this is going to be our accommodation while we're out here.
And there's a fantastic smell - I wish you could smell it, it's incredibly evocative, the smell
of spruce wood coming from the wood burning stoves - it's a real sense of comfort in a harsh landscape.
But it's only out here, once you get away from the communities, that all the traditional skills bubble
to the surface and you can see just how vibrant and alive some of the traditional knowledge still is.
Skills like trapping, making bannock and ice fishing.
It's good to see the youngsters here too - a sign of a vibrant
and healthy culture.
It feels quite cold here - it's that breeze, isn't it?
Ah, yes, yes, it's quite cold.
Yeah. The ice sounds like glass, it's amazing.
That's what happens when it's -50 and that's without the wind chill.
It's thought that early in Franklin's voyage,
some men died from lead poisoning from solder on their tinned food.
Meanwhile Rae could eat fish caught with nets under the ice.
Maybe Franklin should have paid more attention to the local ways.
There really is plenty of food out here if you know how to find it.
And the fish preserves itself, freezing instantly.
It's said that Franklin maintained English standards on his voyages -
he dressed for dinner and dined off china plates.
Rae led a very different life.
And it's only after dark that the serious business begins.
I wonder if John Rae was treated to such fine hospitality.
So I think I may have made the mistake of asking "What do you do for entertainment?",
as the mood has changed - now this is all a bit rough and ready, I have to say - we're in the confinement
of this tent, and you may see shadows from the sound recordist
and all sorts is going on, because I've been invited to play
in their traditional hand-game competition.
This is taken very seriously and already the opposing team
have got the look - they look like they're hunting caribou and I feel like the caribou right now.
But I've got Jared on my side,
who is a champion so I may be in good hands here, we'll see what goes on.
Under no circumstances am I placing any bets cos
people have lost their shirts playing this game, yeah.
I don't like that laugh.
'Don't ask me about the rules. As far as I can tell it's something to do with which hand the stick is in.
'I've no idea who won.
'But at least I didn't lose my shirt.'
Of course, it goes on into the night.
But Rae was just passing through -
the search for Franklin meant he had to move on.
Rae was on his way to the Coppermine River.
From here he could search the surrounding coast for signs of Franklin.
Hearne witnessed a massacre here, and coincidentally, one of Rae's men drowned here too.
He was the only person to die on a Rae expedition,
an incredible achievement when cold and malnutrition were common causes of death on expeditions.
But though Rae and his men
spent years searching, they found no trace of Franklin.
But there was still the Northwest Passage, and Rae had shown he was clearly the man for the job.
Two years later, he was sent back to Pelly Bay to carry on his work.
Make no mistakes about it, this is a really difficult place,
if you're not born here it takes an incredible degree
of mental determination to be able to just cope with conditions here.
This was Rae's fourth expedition into the North, and it was on this
occasion that he was to make the most important discovery of his career, the piece of water
that today bears his name, the Rae Strait, that was the missing link in the Northwest Passage.
The seemingly impossible task was complete and thanks
to his unique approach, Rae was the man who had achieved it.
It was a small strip of water North West of Pelly Bay
between the Boothia Peninsula and King William Island.
The search was finally over.
Rae should have been given a hero's welcome.
But the achievement was immediately overshadowed.
Almost at the moment of his greatest triumph, Inuit from Kugaaruk brought word to Rae
that they had found a party of dead English sailors.
From relics traded with the Inuit, it was clear
this was the Franklin expedition, and their end had not been a quiet one.
They'd behaved in the only way they knew how, desperately hauling their boats over land,
taking their supplies with them.
But without knowledge of how to live in the land that surrounded them, they really hadn't a hope.
Rae couldn't believe it - on this expedition he's found the Northwest Passage,
he knows where the missing explorers are, and he heads back to Britain
to tell people what he's learned -
you'd think they'd be happy, wouldn't you?
Strange thing is, things didn't quite turn out that way.
Armed with the knowledge that Franklin's expedition had perished,
Rae returned to London.
His Admiralty report sealed his fate.
His report was reprinted in this edition of The Times,
Monday October 23rd, 1854.
"Intelligence which may be fairly considered decisive
"has at last reached this country of the sad fate of Sir John Franklin and his brave companions."
The article then reprints Rae's letter - this is the key passage.
"From the mutilated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles, it is evident
"that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resort,
"cannibalism, as a means of prolonging existence."
To suggest that members of the Royal Navy had resorted to cannibalism
was inconceivable to society of the day and when it was learned
that Rae had been unable to verify the facts for himself and had instead
trusted the word of an Inuit, well, society simply closed ranks upon him.
Franklin's widow refused to accept Rae's findings and mounted a sustained attack on him.
It became a cause celebre, and society sided with the Franklins.
And this is the result - statues both here and in Westminster Abbey.
And look, he's given credit for discovering the Northwest Passage -
it's a travesty.
Erected by the unanimous vote of parliament.
Frankly what did they know about the North?!
Rae was our true champion of the North, he'd learned to live there as though it was his home -
not only did he get no public recognition for his achievements,
but society literally left him out in the cold.
He's been all but forgotten for the past hundred years.
Rae does not deserve to be brushed aside -
his achievements were astounding.
He undertook four Arctic expeditions
with the loss of just one life.
He mapped around 1,500 miles of coastline.
He found the Franklin expedition.
And he discovered the Rae Strait, the final link in the Northwest Passage.
That's why it bears his name.
But that still leaves his greatest contribution to exploration.
If you come and travel in this landscape today,
just about every book you read
will tell you how the local people,
the Inuit, have coped with these conditions for thousands of years.
John Rae knew that when he came here, he learned everything he could
about travelling in this incredibly hostile environment
from the people who knew how, and yet he was vilified
for it - I find it astonishing that a man of such wisdom could be treated
so shabbily by the establishment.
Next, my journey takes me in the steps of a woodsman
who mapped some three million square miles of this magnificent land.