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Abstract Robert J. Flaherty, in his early years, had no thought but to follow in the footsteps of his father, a mining engineer. The boy grew up around mining camps of northern Michigan and Canada, with miners and Indians as companions. Later the father became a prospector searching the Canadian wil...
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| Format: | Book Part |
| Language: | unknown |
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Oxford University PressNew York, NY
1993
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195078985.003.0002 https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52035853/isbn-9780195078985-book-part-2.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract Robert J. Flaherty, in his early years, had no thought but to follow in the footsteps of his father, a mining engineer. The boy grew up around mining camps of northern Michigan and Canada, with miners and Indians as companions. Later the father became a prospector searching the Canadian wilderness for mineral resources-for United States Steel and other corporations. Sometimes he took young Bob with him on these explorations, traveling many weeks by canoe in summer and on snowshoes in winter, meeting Eskimos, mapping the country, learning arts of frontier survival. In 1910, at the age of twenty-six, young Robert Flaherty embarked on his own career as explorer and prospector. He was hired by Sir William Mackenzie, builder of Canadian railroads. Canada had decided on a railroad to carry wheat from its western lands to Hudson Bay, for shipment to Europe. Wheat-carrying trains and ships could also carry iron and other ores. What deposits were there in the Hudson Bay area? Young Flaherty was sent to prospect. Within a few short years, in four expeditions for Sir William Mackenzie, he won fame as an explorer, showed astounding resourcefulness and stamina, mapped unknown country, and brought back reports on mineral and pulpwood resources, as well as deposits of gypsum and lignite. |
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