No GPS, Lots of Common Sense

I had a chance to walk to the headwaters of the Columbia River last Saturday after a long sit at meetings during the day. We parked the vehicle just south of Fairmont Hot Springs and an hour's walk brought me to this view of Columbia Lake and the beginning of the great river. One thing I really like about travelling through the Pacific Northwest (aka Cascadia) is to see where the great mapmaker David Thompson spent a good many days. Just outside Invermere we found Kootenae House, where Thompson spent the winter of 1807, travelling there via Howse Pass with his wife and children. It's a pretty uninspiring place for pictures today, but it's easy to imagine what might have been. He's the most underrated of Canada's explorers, in my opinion. We don't do much to enlighten our population about his travels; I often find we get more information about David Thompson while travelling through the US. He accomplished so much during his lifetime, pretty much mapping most of western North America. He had incredible common sense when it came to the fur trade, too, but he was largely ignored by his "superiors". And to think he did most of this journeying with a compass, canoe, and a few writing instruments.