John Rae (September 30, 1813 – July 22, 1893) was a Scottish explorer of Canada's Arctic.

Rae was born at the Hall of Clestrain in the parish of Orphir in the Orkney Islands. After studying medicine at Edinburgh he went into the service of the Hudson's Bay Company as a doctor. He accepted a post as surgeon at Moose Factory, Ontario and remained there for ten years. In 1846 he first ventured on an expedition and in 1848 joined Sir John Richardson in searching for the Northwest Passage. In 1853, he was involved in exploring King William's Land, and made contact with the Inuit. From them he obtained valuable information about the fate of the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin; the shocking and unwelcome evidence Rae discovered of cannibalism as the last resort of the doomed Franklin expedition led Rae to be shunned to a degree by the British establishment; the man who finally found the much-sought-after Northwest Passage died in relative obscurity having never been awarded a Knighthood, as might have been expected for an explorer of his renown. In 1860 he worked on the telegraph line to America, visiting Iceland and Greenland. In 1864 he made a further telegraph survey in the west of Canada. He is buried in the kirkyard of St Magnus' Cathedral, Kirkwall, and there is a memorial to him inside the Cathedral.

Legacy

References

• Coleman, Ernest (2006). The Royal Navy in Polar Exploration from Franklin to Scott. Tempus Publishing. ISBN 0-7524-3660-0.
• McGoogan, Ken (2002). Fatal Passage: The True Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-0993-6.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• Orkneyjar.com Heritage page on Rae, with pictures
• Scotsman article on Rae, 21/07/2006