6 stories set here.
In 1854 the Hudson's Bay Company surveyor John Rae brought back the first hard evidence of the lost Franklin expedition: Inuit testimony and relics — and reports that the starving crews had resorted to cannibalism. Lady Franklin and Charles Dickens led the assault on his character and his Inuit sources. Every later discovery proved Rae right.
Read the story →HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, under Captain Sir John Franklin, sailed from England in May 1845 to find the Northwest Passage. They were last seen by European witnesses in Baffin Bay in July 1845. The wrecks were finally located on the sea floor in 2014 (Erebus) and 2016 (Terror). All 129 men died, partly from lead poisoning from improperly-soldered food tins.
Read the story →General James Wolfe led approximately 4,500 British troops up the unguarded cliffs above Quebec on the night of 12-13 September 1759. The Battle of the Plains of Abraham that followed on the morning of 13 September lasted approximately 20 minutes. Both Wolfe and the French Marquis de Montcalm were killed. Quebec surrendered on 18 September. The Seven Years War concluded with British control of French North America.
Read the story →At 8:43 AM on 6 December 1917, Halifax telegraph dispatcher [Vince Coleman](/articles/halifax-explosion-1917) stayed at his post to warn an inbound passenger train that the burning munitions ship in the harbour was about to explode. The explosion killed him about a minute later. The brass-and-wood telegraph key he typed his last message on now lives in a glass case in Gatineau, Quebec.
Read the story →Every November, Nova Scotia cuts down a 45-foot white spruce and ships it to Boston Common. The tradition is a thank-you for a relief train that arrived in 1917.
Read the story →On 6 December 1917, Vince Coleman had ninety seconds to warn the incoming trains. He used them, and then he was gone.
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