David Thompson Bicentennial 2007
The greatest North American land geographer of his time
On June 26, 2007 a memorial plaque was placed on the wall of the Grey Coat School in Westminster, London, to commemorate the bicentennial of the death of David Thompson.
In 1666, after the Great Fire of London, many inhabitants of the Old City of London moved to the medieval town of Westminster. With its congested and squalid alleys, the area was home to many criminals . It was in this seedy area – home to every type of vice and deprivation - that The Grey Coat School was founded. David Thompson attended this school from the age of seven to fourteen. The aim of the founders was to give an education to the poor of the parish so that they could be ‘loyal citizens, useful workers and solid Christians’.
Thompson was born in Westminster, London, in 1770, the same area where the memorial plaque has been placed. and in 1784 he was apprenticed to the Hudson Bay Company at Churchill Factory. He was only 14 years old.
Thompson crosses the Rocky Mountains in 1807
2007 is the bicentennial of Thompson’s first crossing the Rocky Mountains and the establishment of the trans- mountain fur trade. It also marks the 150th anniversary of his death and the 100th anniversary of Jasper National Park, which protects Athabasca Pass, an important early fur trade route first used by Thompson in 1811.
Lewis and Clark used his maps
He was perhaps the world’s foremost land geographer, mapping 3.9 million square kilometers (1.5 million sq. mi.) of the North American continent and his maps were well used by the Lewis and Clark expedition. He also was a man who witnessed and participated in events that shaped history in both Canada and the United States. The list of his accomplishments is long and one which includes creation of the first reliable map of the west and positioning of the USA/Canada border in many areas.
Trade with the Aboriginal people
Throughout most of his career with the Hudson’s Bay Company, and later the Northwest Company, where he became a partner, Thompson was an active trader with the Aboriginal peoples. He established the trans-mountain fur trade and created new trading posts in British Columbia, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. In his trade ethics, he was regarded as a man of integrity.
He was concerned about the Aboriginal peoples and won the friendship of many, who where of great assistance to him in his work. He was given the name “Koo Koo Sint” (Star Gazer) by the Salish-Flathead peoples, since he habitually performed his astronomical observations at the end of the day. He married a Metis woman, Charlotte Small, with whom he had thirteen children.
He completes work on his famous atlas
In 1843, when he was 73 years old, he completed work on his atlas that mapped the entire Canadian land from Hudson Bay to the Pacific showing an area of over 3.9 million sq. km. (1.5 million sq. mi.). His vision failing, Thompson began writing his adventures from his 77 original notebooks. It was a task that he worked upon until 1850 but would never complete.
He died at the age of 86 in obscurity and a pauper. Charlotte died 3 months later. They are buried in Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.
