John Rae was a Scottish-born surgeon, fur trader, and Arctic explorer whose work became deeply connected to the northern regions that would later form part of Canada. Employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company, Rae spent much of his career surveying and mapping large sections of the Arctic coastline. His expeditions filled in critical gaps in the map of the central Arctic, contributing to geographic knowledge that would later inform Canadian claims and understandings of the North.

Working in the mid-19th century, Rae was among the most effective overland explorers in the search for the Northwest Passage. What distinguished him was not only where he travelled, but how he travelled. Unlike many British naval expeditions, Rae adopted Indigenous Arctic survival methods. He wore Inuit-style clothing suited to extreme cold, travelled by snowshoe and sledge, and relied on local hunting practices.

Crucially, Rae developed working relationships with Inuit communities and treated their knowledge as reliable and essential. This approach allowed him to travel efficiently across the Arctic, in sharp contrast to many Royal Navy expeditions, which often struggled under the weight of imported European practices poorly suited to the environment.

This same approach positioned Rae to make one of the most significant—and controversial—contributions to the story of the lost Franklin Expedition.

In 1854, while travelling in the vicinity of the Boothia Peninsula and King William Island region, Rae gathered detailed testimony from local Inuit and acquired artifacts that had belonged to members of Sir John Franklin’s expedition. These accounts described starving men, a final overland march, and evidence that some of the crew had resorted to cannibalism.

Rae reported these findings to the British Admiralty. The reaction in Britain was swift and, in many quarters, hostile. Lady Jane Franklin worked to defend her husband’s reputation, while Charles Dickens publicly dismissed the Inuit testimony and attacked Rae’s conclusions. Beneath this backlash was a broader unwillingness within Victorian society to accept Indigenous testimony as credible—or to accept that Royal Navy officers could have met such a fate.

Although later archaeological and forensic evidence has supported the core of Rae’s report, his reputation suffered significantly during his lifetime and long after. His achievements were often overshadowed by more celebrated, but less practically successful, imperial expeditions.

In a modern Canadian context, Rae’s legacy has been re-evaluated. He is increasingly recognized as an explorer who worked within, rather than against, the realities of the Arctic. His reliance on Inuit knowledge reflects a model of exploration based on adaptation, cooperation, and respect—an approach that aligns more closely with contemporary understandings of the North as a region shaped by longstanding Inuit presence and knowledge.